Recently, I connected a new monitor to my MacBook, the model is ViewSonic vx3209-2k. It is obviously a 2k monitor, and I had heard that connecting a 2k monitor to a MacBook could cause font blurriness. However, many things need to be tried personally to know for sure. As expected, after connecting the monitor, the fonts were a bit small and the edges were somewhat blurry.
Since I had done some homework in advance, the overall display effect was within expectations, and the next step was the fun of tinkering. I first searched online for related articles and found issues such as being unable to use it after a system upgrade and custom monitor configuration files. I had a feeling that the whole process would definitely be troublesome. But after I stumbled upon some pitfalls (failing to install switchResX), I found that the entire process was actually quite simple.
Device Information#
- MacBook 2016 (12")
- macOS 10.14
The Simplest Solution#
Tools
- Enter Recovery Mode (hold cmd + R while restarting)
- Open Terminal and type
csrutil disable - Download Enable-HiDPI
curl -o ~/enable-HiDPI.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/syscl/Enable-HiDPI-OSX/master/enable-HiDPI.sh
- Change the script's permissions,
chmod +x ~/enable-HiDPI.sh - Run the script,
~/enable-HiDPI.sh - Set parameters, for example, type
1920*1080 - Download RDM
- Restart and apply settings
- Finally, enter Terminal again and type
csrutil enable
Above image:
Related Concepts#
- Retina: A display technology that compresses more pixels onto the screen
- PPI: The number of pixels per inch, i.e., ppi = $\frac{\sqrt{horizontal^2 + vertical^2}}{screen size (inch)}$
- HiDPI: Achieving high density per unit area through software methods