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Interesting. I wonder why anyone would turn ProMotion off considering that 120Hz massively improves responsiveness. I've only encountered one app that doesn't w

by NavinF 3y ago

Interesting. I wonder why anyone would turn ProMotion off considering that 120Hz massively improves responsiveness. I've only encountered one app that doesn't work with variable refresh rate and that's Genshin on Windows. Even that's probably not an issue with newer monitors that can handle VRR down to 60Hz without my monitor's frame-doubling flicker as it keeps switching been 60Hz and 120Hz

Wowfunhappy 3y ago
> I wonder why anyone would turn ProMotion off considering that 120Hz massively improves responsiveness. The first reason that comes to mind is battery life. That's probably the most broadly applicable use case. But also, if I was still doing e.g. frontend web development, I would want to confirm that my css animations looked nice at 60 hz. Edit: My first use case is likely wrong, thank you to replies for reminding me Apple uses adaptive refresh down to 1 hz.
- vvillena 3y ago
  Isn't battery life a reason to keep it on? The refresh rate will be down to 24hz most of the time.
- jwells89 3y ago
  macOS is very good at adaptively reducing refresh rate when nothing is happening on screen, with the panel reportedly supporting the full range of 1-120hz so barring badly engineered apps that are permanently pinned at max refresh, the battery impact of keeping ProMotion on is minimal for most use cases.
  - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
    Oops, thank you, I completely forgot they were doing the adaptive refresh thing!
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    Which raises the question even more why the refresh rate matters during early bootup - surely you could just start with an apple logo and a 1 Hz refresh rate, and then up the rate later during boot when it's time to do some animation...
    - lxgr 3y ago
      Changing the refresh rate makes the screen go blank for a second or so. GP of this thread links to a post arguing that Apple is going out of their way to avoid just that during the boot sequence.
      - londons_explore 3y ago
        Except it doesn't... because during use the dynamic refresh rate changes between 1Hz and 120Hz...
        lxgr 3y ago
        Well, I can only tell you what happens when you manually change the resolution from 60 Hz to "ProMotion" in macOS. Presumably ProMotion is a specific mode that the display/display controller/... first needs to be set to. If you start out in anything other than that and then switch to it later in the boot process, you'd get that blank screen for a second, and Apple avoids that by writing the startup mode to non-volatile memory. Otherwise they could also just always start out in ProMotion mode – but then you'd get flicker every time you (re)boot into any other mode, like 60 Hz for people who prefer that.
        Wowfunhappy 3y ago
        ...so this is where I'm confused, and where I think GP is confused. Why is there a separate 60 Hz mode that requires blanking the display? Why not just keep dynamic refresh enabled on the panel, and then lock it to updating 60 times per second (which it can do, since it's dynamic) for people who prefer that for whatever reason? What is the difference?
- beebeepka 3y ago
  Why would 60 FPS CSS animations look bad on high refresh displays?
  - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
    Well the CSS transition wouldn't run at 60 fps, it would run at 120 fps, no? An animation that looks slick at 120 fps might look too fast/slow/complex/whatever on a common 60 hz screen. So if I was still doing this sort of development, I'd prefer to be working on a 60 hz monitor.
    - beebeepka 3y ago
      Aren't CSS animations capped at 60, same as requestAnimationFrame? I've been advocating (and using) high refresh displays for over two decades and I find your reasoning preposterous. Downgrading to crappy 60 Hz monitor for nothing.
      - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
        > Aren't CSS animations capped at 60, same as requestAnimationFrame? Did some quick Googling to make sure I wasn't just out of the loop on this, as far as I can tell they are not the same: https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/5025 https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/5025
        beebeepka 3y ago
        Can you point me to the part confirming your claim? If anything, it's confirming mine that they both are stuck at 60 Hz.
        Wowfunhappy 3y ago
        The link says: > As such, on their 120hz devices, requestAnimationFrame is throttled to 60hz, whereas CSS animations run at 120hz. Please let me know if I am misunderstanding, it has been a few years since I've done this type of work.
MagerValp 3y ago
To run x64sc at a buttery smooth 50 fps. Admittedly rather niche use case.
zippergz 3y ago
I turn it off because I can’t tell the difference and if it doesn’t improve anything for me, I might as well not have the system wasting battery and other resources on it.
- pb7 3y ago
  It does the opposite: it goes well below 60Hz when there is no motion on screen.
- NavinF 3y ago
  VRR displays run at 1Hz to save battery when the display is static. Reasoning like yours is why every OS's settings page gets neutered with every update.
userbinator 3y ago
I wonder why anyone would turn ProMotion off considering that 120Hz massively improves responsiveness. ...and I bet that's exactly the attitude Apple had when implementing things, which lead to this mess.
- stcg 3y ago
  Well then don't allow turning it off in the first place.
apwoefjwepoo 3y ago
I turned it off. The primary reason is that I use ctrl+arrow keys to move between workspaces frequently. These might seem unrelated, but: * There's a `defaults set` setting that allows you to speed up the transition animation length from 1 second to 0.5 second, which is huge because that transition is extremely poorly implemented (it leaves the windows on the workspace that you're leaving activated until the transition is complete, so you start typing and it's on the other screen you can't even see any more) and VERY SLOW * That setting only works if the refresh rate is 60Hz, and it completely fails to do anything if ProMotion is on, because for some reason the animation length isn't programmed to handle the different refresh rates. So having ProMotion off relieves frustration.
- gassi 3y ago
  This is exactly the reason why I disabled it when I upgraded to my current M1, and I'm relieved to hear I'm not the only one experiencing this.
kccqzy 3y ago
Surely I'm not the only one that simply cannot perceive any difference between 60Hz and 120Hz?
- NavinF 3y ago
  Have you done an eye exam recently? With 20/20 vision and no practice you should be able to see input lag up to 1000Hz by dragging any UI element around like the presenter does in this video: https://youtu.be/vOvQCPLkPt4 https://youtu.be/vOvQCPLkPt4
  - Ingaz 3y ago
    I do not drag UI elements. I'm still struggling to make my Mac (work notebook) as responsive as my personal i3 notebook. My perception: current Mac is an oversized iPad without touchscreen
    - NavinF 3y ago
      specs?
    - seec 3y ago
      As someone who regularly switches between a Windows PC and a Mac on the same display, I know what you mean. It doesn't feel as snappy/responsive, I believe probably linked to how rendering is done in macOS (basically something like a PDF composition). There have been a lot of talk about gaming on Macs, but the truth is that to have any chance, Apple needs to fix this laggy feeling. The same game on the same computer just feels way better in Windows than it does in macOS, it is definitely a software problem...
  - kccqzy 3y ago
    I definitely see it in the video. But no my computer (like all Macs) does not have a touch screen. So without the aid of directly comparing my finger and the object being manipulated on the screen, I cannot perceive the difference.
    - 3y ago
bluescrn 3y ago
Emulation is one case where specific refresh rates are desirable. Would be nice if I could force my MBP to run at 100Hz for PAL Amiga/C64 emulation - or even better if emulators could/would change the refresh rate at least when running full-screen. (Actually, since Sonoma, I can manually set it to 50Hz, but there's no fixed refresh rate options above 60Hz, just 'Pro Motion'. Previously, the refresh rate setting seemed missing entirely on my M1 MBP)
- Audiophilip 3y ago
  Interesting, that could be a limitation to the internal screen of the MBP. On Sonoma I can select 24, 25, 30, 50, 60, 100, 120 Hz, in addition to "Variable (40-120 Hz) refresh rates for my LG C2 display. When selecting 50 or 100 Hz, scrolling in (PAL) C64 emulation in VICE becomes much smoother, but not perfect. However, when I enable variable refresh rate and switch to fullscreen mode, VICE can perfectly synchronize the refresh rate and scrolling/animations become butter smooth.

by NavinF 3y ago

Wowfunhappy 3y ago

> I wonder why anyone would turn ProMotion off considering that 120Hz massively improves responsiveness. The first reason that comes to mind is battery life. That's probably the most broadly applicable use case. But also, if I was still doing e.g. frontend web development, I would want to confirm that my css animations looked nice at 60 hz. Edit: My first use case is likely wrong, thank you to replies for reminding me Apple uses adaptive refresh down to 1 hz.

vvillena 3y ago
Isn't battery life a reason to keep it on? The refresh rate will be down to 24hz most of the time.
jwells89 3y ago
macOS is very good at adaptively reducing refresh rate when nothing is happening on screen, with the panel reportedly supporting the full range of 1-120hz so barring badly engineered apps that are permanently pinned at max refresh, the battery impact of keeping ProMotion on is minimal for most use cases.
- Wowfunhappy 3y ago
  Oops, thank you, I completely forgot they were doing the adaptive refresh thing!
- londons_explore 3y ago
  Which raises the question even more why the refresh rate matters during early bootup - surely you could just start with an apple logo and a 1 Hz refresh rate, and then up the rate later during boot when it's time to do some animation...
  - lxgr 3y ago
    Changing the refresh rate makes the screen go blank for a second or so. GP of this thread links to a post arguing that Apple is going out of their way to avoid just that during the boot sequence.
    - londons_explore 3y ago
      Except it doesn't... because during use the dynamic refresh rate changes between 1Hz and 120Hz...
      - lxgr 3y ago
        Well, I can only tell you what happens when you manually change the resolution from 60 Hz to "ProMotion" in macOS. Presumably ProMotion is a specific mode that the display/display controller/... first needs to be set to. If you start out in anything other than that and then switch to it later in the boot process, you'd get that blank screen for a second, and Apple avoids that by writing the startup mode to non-volatile memory. Otherwise they could also just always start out in ProMotion mode – but then you'd get flicker every time you (re)boot into any other mode, like 60 Hz for people who prefer that.
        Wowfunhappy 3y ago
        ...so this is where I'm confused, and where I think GP is confused. Why is there a separate 60 Hz mode that requires blanking the display? Why not just keep dynamic refresh enabled on the panel, and then lock it to updating 60 times per second (which it can do, since it's dynamic) for people who prefer that for whatever reason? What is the difference?
beebeepka 3y ago
Why would 60 FPS CSS animations look bad on high refresh displays?
- Wowfunhappy 3y ago
  Well the CSS transition wouldn't run at 60 fps, it would run at 120 fps, no? An animation that looks slick at 120 fps might look too fast/slow/complex/whatever on a common 60 hz screen. So if I was still doing this sort of development, I'd prefer to be working on a 60 hz monitor.
  - beebeepka 3y ago
    Aren't CSS animations capped at 60, same as requestAnimationFrame? I've been advocating (and using) high refresh displays for over two decades and I find your reasoning preposterous. Downgrading to crappy 60 Hz monitor for nothing.
    - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
      > Aren't CSS animations capped at 60, same as requestAnimationFrame? Did some quick Googling to make sure I wasn't just out of the loop on this, as far as I can tell they are not the same: https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/5025 https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/5025
      - beebeepka 3y ago
        Can you point me to the part confirming your claim? If anything, it's confirming mine that they both are stuck at 60 Hz.
        Wowfunhappy 3y ago
        The link says: > As such, on their 120hz devices, requestAnimationFrame is throttled to 60hz, whereas CSS animations run at 120hz. Please let me know if I am misunderstanding, it has been a few years since I've done this type of work.

MagerValp 3y ago

To run x64sc at a buttery smooth 50 fps. Admittedly rather niche use case.

zippergz 3y ago

I turn it off because I can’t tell the difference and if it doesn’t improve anything for me, I might as well not have the system wasting battery and other resources on it.

pb7 3y ago
It does the opposite: it goes well below 60Hz when there is no motion on screen.
NavinF 3y ago
VRR displays run at 1Hz to save battery when the display is static. Reasoning like yours is why every OS's settings page gets neutered with every update.

userbinator 3y ago

I wonder why anyone would turn ProMotion off considering that 120Hz massively improves responsiveness. ...and I bet that's exactly the attitude Apple had when implementing things, which lead to this mess.

stcg 3y ago
Well then don't allow turning it off in the first place.

apwoefjwepoo 3y ago

I turned it off. The primary reason is that I use ctrl+arrow keys to move between workspaces frequently. These might seem unrelated, but: * There's a `defaults set` setting that allows you to speed up the transition animation length from 1 second to 0.5 second, which is huge because that transition is extremely poorly implemented (it leaves the windows on the workspace that you're leaving activated until the transition is complete, so you start typing and it's on the other screen you can't even see any more) and VERY SLOW * That setting only works if the refresh rate is 60Hz, and it completely fails to do anything if ProMotion is on, because for some reason the animation length isn't programmed to handle the different refresh rates. So having ProMotion off relieves frustration.

gassi 3y ago
This is exactly the reason why I disabled it when I upgraded to my current M1, and I'm relieved to hear I'm not the only one experiencing this.

kccqzy 3y ago

Surely I'm not the only one that simply cannot perceive any difference between 60Hz and 120Hz?

NavinF 3y ago
Have you done an eye exam recently? With 20/20 vision and no practice you should be able to see input lag up to 1000Hz by dragging any UI element around like the presenter does in this video: https://youtu.be/vOvQCPLkPt4 https://youtu.be/vOvQCPLkPt4
- Ingaz 3y ago
  I do not drag UI elements. I'm still struggling to make my Mac (work notebook) as responsive as my personal i3 notebook. My perception: current Mac is an oversized iPad without touchscreen
  - NavinF 3y ago
    specs?
  - seec 3y ago
    As someone who regularly switches between a Windows PC and a Mac on the same display, I know what you mean. It doesn't feel as snappy/responsive, I believe probably linked to how rendering is done in macOS (basically something like a PDF composition). There have been a lot of talk about gaming on Macs, but the truth is that to have any chance, Apple needs to fix this laggy feeling. The same game on the same computer just feels way better in Windows than it does in macOS, it is definitely a software problem...
- kccqzy 3y ago
  I definitely see it in the video. But no my computer (like all Macs) does not have a touch screen. So without the aid of directly comparing my finger and the object being manipulated on the screen, I cannot perceive the difference.
  - 3y ago

bluescrn 3y ago

Emulation is one case where specific refresh rates are desirable. Would be nice if I could force my MBP to run at 100Hz for PAL Amiga/C64 emulation - or even better if emulators could/would change the refresh rate at least when running full-screen. (Actually, since Sonoma, I can manually set it to 50Hz, but there's no fixed refresh rate options above 60Hz, just 'Pro Motion'. Previously, the refresh rate setting seemed missing entirely on my M1 MBP)

Audiophilip 3y ago
Interesting, that could be a limitation to the internal screen of the MBP. On Sonoma I can select 24, 25, 30, 50, 60, 100, 120 Hz, in addition to "Variable (40-120 Hz) refresh rates for my LG C2 display. When selecting 50 or 100 Hz, scrolling in (PAL) C64 emulation in VICE becomes much smoother, but not perfect. However, when I enable variable refresh rate and switch to fullscreen mode, VICE can perfectly synchronize the refresh rate and scrolling/animations become butter smooth.