SWITCHRESX HOW TO
SWITCHRESX MAC OS
SWITCHRESX INSTALL
SWITCHRESX UPDATE
SWITCHRESX PRO

Select the largest one that says “HiDPI” next to it, and you’re in business! (Note that if you have a Macbook Air 13 you’ll probably want one that’s in a 16:10 ratio, and for a Macbook Air 11 you’ll want 16:9.)įor the Macbook Air 11, that’s a DPI in HiDPI mode of 253 pixels per linear inch, higher than the Macbook Pro 13’s 220 DPI in Retina mode. You should see a long list of resolutions that you never knew your Macbook Air had available. Now click on that new menubar icon that looks like a screen. Close the SRX prefs window and quit System Preferences. For these purposes, you’ll only need to set two of its preferences (open System Preferences tap on the SwitchResX icon towards the bottom of the screen.) Be sure that its menubar extra is enabled (SRX menus prefs), and that the “SwitchResX daemon” is set to Launch on login (SRX general prefs).

SWITCHRESX INSTALL

You’ll need admin privileges on your account to install it.

SWITCHRESX UPDATE

If no “HiDPI” resolutions show up when you use SwitchResX, check out Apple, You Make it Hard: Mac Laptop “Retina” Screen Update UPDATE : In addition to the below, you may also need to enable HiDPI on your Mac system. Bluntly, it has a lot more complexity than I’ll ever need, and I’m comfortable with tech (see above.) But for $16 it gave me a Retina screen equivalent for my Macbook Air, without delving into the tech details further than an added menubar icon. SwitchResX is a utility designed to give its users far more control over monitors and their resolutions than Apple is willing to provide. Here’s my secret: SwitchResX $16 USD (free trial available) I discovered a way around the lack of a “Retina” display quite by accident. The Retina displays on my iOS devices show text that is more crisp, and have more detail in the graphics.

Reading on the normal resolution Macbook Air 11 with a pixel density 1 of 135 DPI-sometimes I take off my glasses and look at the screen from a distance of six inches (I’m very nearsighted) in order to read something. Not only that, but it has that nice, crisp Retina screen. You can get Retina-style resolution on your older Macbook Air. To a former aerospace engineer, 5.6 ounces saved is 5.6 ounces, man! Think what you can boost with an extra 5.6 ounces to spare for fuel! In particular, I would very much like a newer Macbook 12 instead of my older Macbook Air 11. I look at tech specs of new Apple products and heave deep, heartfelt sighs. I don’t know about you, but I have a severe technology envy problem.

So results are entirely dependent on what SwitchResX can do with your display hardware. For example, this doesn’t do much of anything for my LG Ultrawide, which can’t display a stretched resolution. If a monitor can’t display a stretched resolution, the best it can do for a HiDPI is half the resolution of the maximum native resolution. With both these effects in place, I can get a 1280×720 “Retina” resolution on my old MacBook Air 11. Thus, the text is four times sharper because it uses four times as many pixels to render text. Enabling HiDPI enables you to use a “half-resolution” or HiDPI. N.B.: This works because of two effects: SwitchResX enables you to go to a scaled resolution larger than the largest “native” resolution on many monitors (AKA “stretched” resolution)-including the MacBook Air 11 built-in monitor. If you’ve never used Terminal before, here’s a quick breakdown of what’s happening in its screen. Now HiDPI (AKA “Retina”) resolutions should be available in the SwitchResX menu, assuming your laptop screen is capable. Terminal will ask for your admin password. Copy and paste the following command: sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/ DisplayResolutionEnabled -bool true.Open the Terminal app (you can find it in Applications/Utilities).Start from an account for which you have admin privileges.

SWITCHRESX HOW TO

Here’s a summary of how to enable these delightful screen modes:

SWITCHRESX MAC OS

Long story short, I found what I needed in this article, “ How to Enable HiDPI Mode in Mac OS X,” by Jim Tanous. When I did a clean install of Mojave, I wiped out both the tools and the HiDPI capability. It seems that years and years ago, I installed Apple’s dev tools, which enabled HiDPI (pseudo-Retina), unbeknownst to me. Well, I just upgraded my MacBook Air 11 to Mojave (MacOS 10.14.2) via a “clean install”, and it took away my beautiful high-resolution, pseudo-Retina screen! As an obsessive nerd, I could not possibly let that one stand. In November, I wrote about giving your older Mac laptop a “Retina” screen by enabling it with SwitchResX.

Switchresx