I was wondering why people were complaining about the scrolling. I felt it was ok, not perfect but ok. Then I saw this post and checked, my unit had it already selected for some reason. Took it off and now I know why people were complaining. Very quickly enabled it again.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Still no 120hz Safari scolling with the MacOS 12.1 RC
- Thread starter Kylo83
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I was wondering why people were complaining about the scrolling. I felt it was ok, not perfect but ok. Then I saw this post and checked, my unit had it already selected for some reason. Took it off and now I know why people were complaining. Very quickly enabled it again.
That doesn't fix it and honestly makes scrolling even more choppy.
That is ridiculous. It's nearly the entire point of ProMotion and higher than 60hz devices whether it be phones, windows laptops, or Macs.
I tried it and didn't notice any difference, but then I'm not highly sensitive to the issue.
It does interest me, though, that people here have seen opposite results using that setting, which suggests some of what people see isn't on the screen.
If you're on the beta or RC, chances are they fixed the GPU clock bug and yeah, that will hopefully not require this option.
Another thought: you may be afflicted by the WindowServer bug that causes one core to be constantly at 100% CPU load. What I've just showed basically just uses the CPU to render in Safari instead of GPU. The CPU should be plenty fast enough. If it's not, you have some other problems.
As above, if you're on beta or RC, they might have fixed GPU clock bug. The GPU clock bug is present in 12.0.1 and this basically reverts back to CPU rendering instead of relying on GPU rendering. This makes a lot more sense if you're in Low Power Mode.
I have another thread where I showed how you can "trick" Safari into doing 120Hz. Check here:
Enabling 120Hz scrolling in Safari
Well, I found out how to do it. This is silly as hell. 1. Enable Develop menu 2. Go to Develop > Experimental Features > disable GPU Process: Canvas Rendering 3. Restart Safari 4. Set display refresh rate to ProMotion 5. Launch testufo.com, notice how the UFOs are scrolling at 60fps 6. Now set...
forums.macrumors.com
So yeah, I know exactly what each and every option in Safari does. Please don't state things when you don't know yourself.
On a perfectly "healthy" system, the option technically shouldn't make any difference. It's just causing canvas rendering to be done on the CPU instead of GPU. The CPU should be plenty fast enough in M1. In Low Power Mode, it makes more of a difference because it seems Apple is applying some form of frame limiter with the GPU. CPU can get away from that.
For people seeing this option causing choppier scrolling, I think they may have phantom CPU loads that they are not aware of. I have seen this "phantom" load myself, presented as a problem from going fullscreen with some videos in Safari when using GPU canvas rendering. It seems to be a thread leak, and when that happens, the only way to resolve it is to restart MacOS.
Honestly, I find Monterey to be a big mess with the new MacBook. The notch isn't accounted for properly, or even universally, then there's the massive memory leak issues in multiple different apps (especially Adobe), then there's this weird thread leak issue, then there's HDR crashing, etc...
I don't know what kind of sites you visit that are choppy. Even 60hz everything I visit is fast.
I have no issues with my device. The only thing this does is trick the ghosting site into thinking safari is running at 120Hz. It isn’t. Its choppy and looks terrible and worse than 60Hz. This is not any type of fix.If you're on the beta or RC, chances are they fixed the GPU clock bug and yeah, that will hopefully not require this option.
Another thought: you may be afflicted by the WindowServer bug that causes one core to be constantly at 100% CPU load. What I've just showed basically just uses the CPU to render in Safari instead of GPU. The CPU should be plenty fast enough. If it's not, you have some other problems.
As above, if you're on beta or RC, they might have fixed GPU clock bug. The GPU clock bug is present in 12.0.1 and this basically reverts back to CPU rendering instead of relying on GPU rendering. This makes a lot more sense if you're in Low Power Mode.
I have another thread where I showed how you can "trick" Safari into doing 120Hz. Check here:
Enabling 120Hz scrolling in Safari
Well, I found out how to do it. This is silly as hell. 1. Enable Develop menu 2. Go to Develop > Experimental Features > disable GPU Process: Canvas Rendering 3. Restart Safari 4. Set display refresh rate to ProMotion 5. Launch testufo.com, notice how the UFOs are scrolling at 60fps 6. Now set...
So yeah, I know exactly what each and every option in Safari does. Please don't state things when you don't know yourself.
Safari is running at 120Hz with that. This can be seen if you have Quartz Debug.
If it's choppy, it's because of the GPU clock bug I mentioned. Apple is throttling the GPU clock very aggressively in Safari due to whatever reason. Switching to CPU does slightly better but it's not perfect. The framerate in Safari stays consistently around 90-110fps depending on the site. And that's only if you applied the trick I mentioned in the other thread. Otherwise, the framerate is basically half what display refresh rate is if ProMotion was set before Safari launched.
It's simple to check, really. Just set your refresh rate to ProMotion, restart, launch Safari. Then... without closing anything, switch from ProMotion to 60Hz and then try scrolling in Safari. Both testufo.com and Quartz Debug will tell you Safari is scrolling at 30fps then.
Ok that's fine but it doesn't change the fact that the "fix" you are giving people doesn't work. It might show as running at 120Hz but its choppier and looks worse than it does at 60Hz.
The fact is that other people reported that it does fix their system.
And technically, it should not do anything on systems that work properly. All it does is shift canvas rendering in Safari from GPU to CPU.
If it causes extra choppiness on your system, then I would advise that you look into Activity Monitor and use Quartz Debug to make absolutely sure nothing is causing extra CPU load in your system. Honestly, I have ran into this issue before. WindowServer was causing 100% load on my system until I fixed a few other things.
P.S.: if you need more facts, "GPU Process: Canvas Rendering" is known to cause issues in iOS 15.
iOS 15 Experimental WebKit Feature… | Apple Developer Forums
It is advised that it stays off. I'm not sure why it is enabled by default on Monterey. It is "experimental" for a reason.
Last edited:
No one seems to have discussed the elephant in the room. The new displays are amazing, but when it comes to motion they are awful. They have the worst lag times of any modern laptop screen. So what you’re seeing isn’t promotion not working, it’s the terrible latency of the displays. It doesn’t bother me too much, but I definitely noticed it while scrolling compared to other displays. In that specific regard it’s worse than the MacBook Pro I replaced. Don’t expect Apple to fix it since it’s a hardware limitation, not a software issue.
Have they Blur Busted it yet?
Blur Busters | Everything Better Than 60Hz
Everything Better Than 60Hz — including 120Hz, 144Hz, 240Hz, LightBoost, ULMB, Turbo240, G-SYNC, and more.
blurbusters.com
120Hz isn't enabled on this release candidate build in Safari. That's not people saying that, its Apple saying that. They claimed to have released it in their Safari technology preview and then immediately pulled that statement from the release notes because it was clearly not enabled.
Yeah its a major let down for sure. Its not something that is oging to make me return or sell my MacBook Pro but its definitely a let down as it was such a touted feature. It feels like a bit of a cheat from Apple when the place where most would like to see Promotion for smooth scrolling doesn't work at all.
I don't have a lot of hope at this point that it will be fixed as it must be a hardware limitation preventing it from running smoothly on the panel Apple chose to use. I feel like if it could be enabled they would have already enabled it at this point.
Exactly. According to Notebookcheck the 14" is twice as bad than the MBA in response time. Almost negates the ProMotion sadly. It's almost as if Apple added ProMotion so they could cheap out on the display panel itself.
EDIT: wanted to add the 12.9" MiniLED IPP has much worse response times than the non-miniLED IPP 11" so if that's an indication of things to come I'm not sure Apple is headed in the right direction.
Last edited:
