Scaling Macbook Air internal display without changing the resolution

1. You get a full list of resolutions by going to System Settings ➜ Displays ➜ Advanced, and turning on Show Resolutions as List. From there, you can pick any resolution you may want and test it out. You can get more resolutions in the list, by turning on the "Show All Resolutions" switch at the bottom of the list.
2. Full screen videos play in their native resolution or as close to it as possible, they are not limited by the desktop resolution setting.
3. You can't have it both ways. If you want to use the full resolution, then you deal with tiny text, because what you are essentially doing is moving away from the text to see the entire resolution, and since the screen is a fixed size, to fit more pixels in the same physical screen you need to make things smaller. It would work exactly the same on Windows. Increase resolution and you get smaller text.
4. Apple has no official stance either way. You are free to set the resolution to any of the supported values in the list. It's entirely up to you, which one you find workable.

Hey, I noticed the same thing with my MacBook Air M4. Coming from a 4K display, the screen felt way less sharp. Turns out macOS uses display scaling by default so even though the screen is 2560x1664, it runs at a much lower rendered resolution to keep things readable.

Without a tool like BetterDisplay, you can’t really use the full native resolution. Kinda frustrating, I agree. Not exactly a scam, but definitely not super transparent from Apple.

BetterDisplay helped me set a custom res closer to native while keeping things usable. Worth trying if you want sharper visuals.

Phil0124 wrote:

3. You can't have it both ways. If you want to use the full resolution, then you deal with tiny text, because what you are essentially doing is moving away from the text to see the entire resolution, and since the screen is a fixed size, to fit more pixels in the same physical screen you need to make things smaller. It would work exactly the same on Windows. Increase resolution and you get smaller text.

There's an inherent tradeoff between

• The physical size of a display
• The physical size of text and objects
• The amount of "workspace", i.e., how much "stuff" you can cram onto the display at once

Windows can't escape that.

But the controls that Windows and macOS provide for handling such tradeoffs are different.

On Windows, the way things work is that you set the Windows resolution to the display's full native resolution. Then you enter a separate scaling percentage (e.g., 100%, 150%, 200%) to tell applications to make their text larger or smaller. This is simple to explain, but if an application ignores or refuses to honor the scaling control, there might not be much Windows can do about it. In the early days of high-PPI displays, I believe that some Windows users experienced a lot of pain because of that.

Macs use the Retina scaling system, which offers more backwards compatibility, at the cost of making things harder to explain, and possibly forcing the computer to do more work.

iamnoman21 wrote:

Without a tool like BetterDisplay, you can’t really use the full native resolution.

I don't have BetterDisplay – yet had no trouble getting my Mac to make use of the full native resolution of my 4K (3840x2160) pixel monitor. In Retina "like 2560x1440" mode, this is what System Information shows.

Note how a Displays Settings of "looks like 2560x1440" translates into a 5120x2880 pixel canvas. Because the monitor only has UHD 4K (3840x2160) resolution, that 5120x2880 image is downscaled to 3840x2160 for the final output to the monitor.

Photos can be zoomed in to actual size in most image viewers including Preview and Apple Photos App. But then you need to scroll around the image. In Preview, go to the View menu, and choose Actual Size.

Yes, videos, when not in full screen are constrained by the resolution and screen size. You could possibly extend the video player to be in the full video resolution, but then a big part of it would be out of the viewable area.

GeorgeDomse wrote:

That expensive laptop is running BELOW FULL HD all the time. Ridiculous.

That's almost certainly Retina "looks like 1470x956" mode, in which

• Applications size things "as if" the display had a resolution of 1470x956 pixels
• The Mac draws on a canvas with 2940x1912 pixels
• The Mac downscales the 2940x1912 picture to fit on your 13" M4 MacBook Air's 2560x1660 pixel screen

The Mac is using the full 2560x1660 pixel resolution of the screen. Just because things don't work the same way that they do in Windows doesn't mean that the Mac is "running BELOW FULL HD all the time".

First of all, this really much sound like a huge scam.

It's not a scam. It's the result of Apple deciding to handle high-PPI displays in a more backwards-compatible way than Microsoft did. With Apple's approach, Retina-aware programs (which is just about all of them, now) need to identify themselves to the operating system as such. When they do, they can draw in high detail, filling in canvas areas with 4x as many pixels (2x as many in each direction) as the Displays Settings resolution might suggest.

Since the operating system controls all access to hardware, when a legacy application that isn't Retina aware tries to draw something on the screen, macOS can transparently adjust the drawing call behind the application's back – so that output appears in the proper place, with the proper size, and doesn't just shrink into a corner.

Secondly: how do I change the scaling in a manner that keeps the screen resolution at the maximum of 2560*1664?

To make the Mac draw on a canvas with at least as many pixels as the screen, choose

• 2560x1664, or
• Retina "looks like" 1280x832 (or higher)

The first setting will cause text to get very tiny due to the screen's high PPI. The two settings that are most "pixel perfect" would be 2560x1664 and Retina "looks like 1280x832", since those are the two where the canvas would have exactly 2560x1664 pixels, the same as the LCD panel.

GeorgeDomse wrote:

Notice how the full thread is about the built-in display?

Notice how Apple has done Retina scaling on all built-in Retina displays ever since they introduced the MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2012)?

Notice how Apple says that the M4 MacBook Airs have Liquid Retina displays?

Notice how the operation of Retina modes is pretty much the same on every Mac that offers them? The canvas has 2x as many pixels in each direction as the nominal Displays {Preferences/Settings} resolution. That's what my last post illustrates. If you want to see what the specific numbers are on your M4 MacBook Air in various modes, there is nothing keeping you from running System Information yourself.

I'm not going to run out and purchase the exact same hardware configuration that everybody that I try to help has, nor would it be reasonable for them to expect me to do so.

GeorgeDomse wrote:

I have the feeling you are here to troll this thread.

This is my first Macbook, I do not care about Apple having been doing this shady tactic for 13 years. That just makes it even worse. "Retina" a makeup word for their products, knowingly blurring the meaning behind.

There is nothing "shady" about Apple's Retina scaling modes. Nor I am I here to troll the thread. In light of your continued attempts to paint Apple as "shady" – despite my repeated attempts to explain how the Mac works, to you – I'd suggest that you look in the mirror for that.