Your MacBook Pro is hiding half its brightness.
The panel is built for 1,600 nits. macOS hands ordinary windows about 500 of them and keeps the rest for HDR video. BrighterMac gives the rest to everything else.
The download is the full app, free and at full strength for 3 days. After that it does not lock you out: the app keeps boosting part of your screen, and that part gets smaller week by week. No account, no card, no sign-up, and it never contacts our servers until you buy something. macOS 14 or later, on MacBook Pro models with a Liquid Retina XDR display — see the list, including the models macOS currently breaks.
This demo needs an XDR display
On a MacBook Pro with a Liquid Retina XDR display, this box shows a live side-by-side: ordinary white next to the same white driven past it — rendered by your own panel, with nothing installed. Your current display reports no extended dynamic range, so there is nothing honest to show you here.
Both halves are white. The right one is brighter, and nothing is installed — that headroom is already in your display. An app is what makes the rest of macOS use it.
If the halves look identical: your Mac may be in reference mode or Low Power Mode, both of which give the panel zero headroom, or the browser window may be on a different display.
- 3 days free, no card, and it keeps going after
- No private Apple APIs
- No tracking, no telemetry, no account
- The licence check knows a pseudonym, not you
- Measured on a real XDR panel
The problem
You paid for a 1,600-nit display and macOS lets you use 500.
The Liquid Retina XDR panel in a MacBook Pro can reach 1,600 nits. That ceiling is reserved: macOS grants it to HDR content and holds ordinary windows at the SDR white level — 500 nits on the 2021 and early 2023 machines, 600 on M3, 1,000 on M4 and M5 but only in direct sunlight.
In practice it is lower still. On our test machine, with the brightness slider at maximum indoors, the panel's own brightness key reports 200 nits on mains and 140 on battery. That is the white you are actually looking at while you edit a photo, read a document in a bright room, or work next to a window.
What the panel is rated to do.
What our test machine actually shows for white, measured from
IOMFBBrightnessLevel on mains power.
The solution
Not a trick. The same headroom, handed to everything.
When you play an HDR video, macOS lifts the panel above SDR white. BrighterMac asks for that same lift and then raises the display's tone curve into it, so the brightness reaches your windows instead of one video frame.
It uses what is already there
Public Core Graphics and a one-pixel HDR window. No private frameworks, no kernel extension, no patched system files, nothing to uninstall but the app.
Your panel sets the limit
The boost factor is the lower of our design point and a ceiling computed from the headroom your display reports right now. The curve cannot be pushed past the point where your brightest tones would collapse into one value.
It admits what it does not know
Every supported model is labelled measured, supported-but-unmeasured, or blocked by a macOS defect. One model has been on our bench. We tell you which.
How it works
Four steps, all of them documented macOS behaviour.
It checks the machine, not just the screen
The obvious approach is to ask the display whether it has extended range. We tried it and threw it away: a MacBook Air M5 reports a headroom of 1.2 — above any sensible threshold — and gains exactly nothing from the boost, because the value never moves. So the model decides eligibility and the headroom reading is only the live signal that HDR mode is running.
It asks macOS for the extended range
A transparent 1×1 pixel window with HDR content is enough for macOS to grant the display its headroom — the same mechanism a video player uses. One pixel, because the window is a signal, not a picture.
It lifts the tone curve
A 256-entry gamma table through CGSetDisplayTransferByTable.
Exactly 256: writing the table's full 1,024-entry capacity clips every entry to
maximum, which is a trap we fell into and measured our way out of.
It gets out of the way
Menu bar only, no Dock icon. ⌥⌘B toggles it from anywhere.
It releases the boost when you close the lid and when the battery drops below
the level you chose, and restores your display bit-for-bit on quit.
Measurements
What we measured, and what we have not.
Everything below was measured on a MacBook Pro 16" M1 Max
(MacBookPro18,2) on 20 September 2026, against the shipping builds of
the other apps. Nothing here is taken from anyone's marketing page.
From launch to full boost. Vivid takes 2.4 s, BrightIntosh 6.5 s.
For macOS to restore your display after a kill -9. The system does
this on its own; so does every app in this category.
Supported models we have physically measured. 20 more are supported on a decision, and 4 are blocked outright.
Not measured yet, and therefore not claimed:
Luminance with a colorimeter or light meter. Power draw with the boost on. Panel temperature. Colour accuracy as a ΔE figure. Every one of these is a number someone could legitimately ask us for, and until we have taken it the honest answer is that we have not. The brightness key we read is a system value, not photometry.
Before you buy
When you should not use this.
A brightness utility that only lists its strengths is telling you half of what you need. Here is the other half.
You have an M5 Pro or M5 Max
macOS 26.3 broke gamma tables on those chips — they are stored correctly and never applied. f.lux, MonitorControl and DisplayCAL are hit by the same defect. The app blocks those models instead of failing quietly. The details are on the compatibility page.
You work in a reference preset
Reference modes pin the panel to a defined white so that what you grade is what someone else sees. That leaves zero headroom, by design, and there is nothing for the app to unlock. Low Power Mode does the same.
You rely on f.lux or a calibration profile
When the app quits, macOS resets the gamma table to your ColorSync profile rather than to whatever another app had set — so a quit clears their adjustment too. Every app that writes the gamma ramp has this problem. That explains it; it does not excuse it, and it is on our list.
You need it to run itself
There is no schedule, no sunset trigger and no per-app rule yet, and no Shortcuts or CLI surface. If that is how you use your Mac, Vivid does more than we do today.
What it does
Everything in the app today.
Menu bar, nothing else
No Dock icon, no window in your way. One click to toggle, or
⌥⌘B from any app.
Headroom-capped boost
The factor follows what your panel reports rather than a number we picked once and hard-coded.
Battery guard
Choose a cut-off between 10 % and 50 %. Below it the boost releases; plug in and it returns.
Lid and display watch
Closing the lid or changing displays releases the boost rather than leaving a stale gamma table behind.
A visual check
A split-screen button shows boosted and unboosted halves side by side, so you can see the effect rather than take our word for it. Nobody else ships this.
Launch at login
Through SMAppService, the documented route, so macOS manages it
and you can turn it off in System Settings.
Comparison
Measured against Vivid and BrightIntosh.
Three rows in this table go against us, including the price. They stay in. A comparison where one product wins everything is an advertisement, and you can tell.
| BrighterMac | Vivid | BrightIntosh | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Boost factor 1 | Capped by your panel’s headroom | Fixed ×1.45 | Adaptive, fixed ceiling |
| Highlight clipping at full boost 2 | Capped by construction | 31.1 % of the curve | 27.0 % of the curve |
| Time from launch to full boost 3 | 2.28 s | 2.4 s | 6.5 s |
| Private Apple frameworks 4 | None | Links DisplayServices | None |
| Restores your display bit-for-bit on quit 5 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Refuses to run where macOS is broken 6 | Yes, by model | not measured | not measured |
| Tells you when it could not verify the effect | Yes | No | No |
| Built-in visual check that the boost is real 7 | Yes | No | No |
| Battery threshold you choose | 10–50 %, seven steps | No | No |
| Scheduling, sunset, per-app rules 8 | No | Yes | Partly |
| Shortcuts, CLI, URL scheme 9 | No | Yes | No |
| Backs off automatically when headroom drops 10 | Yes, within 0.5 s | No | No |
| What it costs 11 | 9,99 € a year, or 49 € once | 10 € once (24.99 USD in the App Store) | 1.99 USD once |
| Try it before paying 12 | 3 days at full strength, then less area | Half the screen, no time limit | 3 days, whole app |
| How the licence is checked 13 | A signed document the app verifies itself | A yes/no answer from a web service | No licence check outside the App Store |
| Where the verdict is kept afterwards 14 | A signed file, re-verified on every launch | A yes/no flag in the app’s own preferences | The App Store receipt |
| How long it works with no network at all 15 | Up to 180 days, and we publish the number | Not documented | Indefinitely outside the App Store |
| Source code you can read | No | No | Yes, GPL-3.0 |
- Ours computes a ceiling from the headroom the display reports and takes the lower of that and the design point, so the curve cannot be driven past the panel. BrightIntosh varies its factor with EDR but not with where the curve would clip.
- Measured by counting entries pinned to maximum in a 1024-entry gamma table. Our figure is a property of how the ceiling is computed; the current engine has not yet been re-measured on the bench, and we will publish the number when it has.
- Measured on the same MacBook Pro 16" M1 Max, mains power, at the versions listed below.
- Observed from the shipped binaries’ link tables. Private frameworks are rejected by the Mac App Store and can break on any macOS update.
- All three do, and so does macOS on its own within 19 ms of a force-quit. We list it because people ask, not because it separates anyone.
- The M5 Pro and M5 Max defect. We block those models rather than sell into a failure.
- A split-screen button that shows boosted and unboosted halves side by side.
- A real gap on our side. Vivid is ahead here and we are not going to hide it.
- Also a gap. If you automate your Mac, Vivid does more today.
- Ours re-reads the display’s reported headroom twice a second while the boost is on and recomputes the factor when it falls, measured at 0.364–0.585 s to react. It was measured with a simulated headroom value on a Mac without an XDR panel; that real HDR playback lowers the headroom in the first place is the part we have not yet confirmed on the target machine.
- The two figures on the right are the vendors’ own published prices, not our measurements, and both are one-time payments: nobody else in this category sells a subscription. Ours is the only one with a yearly option, and the honest reason is on the pricing section of the front page — the mechanism depends on macOS behaviour that Apple has already broken once. If you would rather pay once, our lifetime licence is the comparable number, and it is higher than both.
- Ours starts by itself the first time you open the download — no account, no card, no key — and after the first days it keeps boosting a part of the screen that shrinks over time rather than stopping. The Mac App Store edition has no trial at all, because a paid App Store app is bought before it is downloaded. The other two figures are the vendors’ own published terms rather than our measurements: Vivid’s free Splitscreen Mode has no time limit, and BrightIntosh publishes a three-day trial.
- Ours is an Ed25519 signature, so a forged key cannot be produced without our private key, and a forged reply cannot be produced by anyone who controls the network. Vivid 2.18.1, read from the binary the vendor ships: the app calls Gumroad’s licence endpoint and the reply is unsigned JSON, with no cryptographic symbols anywhere in the licence path. BrightIntosh publishes its source under GPL-3.0; the entitlement check is compiled into the App Store build only. Anyone can repeat both checks on the shipped apps.
- Observed in Vivid 2.18.1’s own strings (`userHasValidLicense`). We state where the value lives and draw no conclusion beyond that. Ours cannot be edited into a different answer, because changing it invalidates the signature.
- All of Vivid, BetterDisplay and Lunar require a network to activate; none of the three publishes how long their apps keep working without one, which is why this row says "not documented" rather than a figure we would have to guess. Ours is written into the terms, and the app tells you before anything stops.
Measured 20 September 2026 on a MacBook Pro 16" M1 Max (MacBookPro18,2),
macOS 26, mains power. Versions: BrighterMac 0.1.0, Vivid 2.18.1 (released 11 March 2026),
BrightIntosh 6.0.10. Everything above comes either
from our own measurements of the shipped apps or, where the footnote says so, from the
shipped binaries and the vendors' own published terms — never from anyone's marketing.
Price
Two ways to pay for the same app.
Rent it by the year, or buy it for good. The app is identical either way — the only difference is whether there is another payment next year.
Annual licence
- It renews automatically every year until you cancel. You can cancel from the link in your receipt or by writing to us, in one step and without asking us why. Cancelling stops the next payment and nothing else — the licence runs to the end of the year you have already paid for.
- If you stop paying, the app stops boosting. It stays installed and keeps your settings, but the screen goes back to what macOS gives you. We would rather write that here than let you find it out.
- Every update, for as long as the licence runs.
- The licence covers three Macs at a time.
Lifetime licence
- One payment, and the app is yours. No renewal date, no second invoice, nothing that can lapse because a card expired.
- Five times the yearly price. It pays for itself after five years and it is the worse deal before that — which of those happens depends on how long the technique survives, and the paragraph below is our honest guess.
- Every update we ship, with no second payment.
- The licence covers three Macs at a time.
Why a subscription at all?
Because this app is maintenance, not a finished object. macOS changes how displays are handled every year, and it has already broken the mechanism once: gamma tables stopped being applied on the M5 Pro and M5 Max, and we had to block those models. Our own risk analysis puts the chance that the technique breaks or the category disappears within five years at 65 to 75 per cent. Keeping it working is the work, and the yearly licence is what pays for it. If you would rather take that risk yourself and be done with it, the 49 € option is exactly that trade.
Try it before either. The download is the whole app at full strength for 3 days, and after that the app keeps boosting part of your screen, and that part gets smaller week by week. There is no lock-out, no account, no card, and the app does not contact our servers at all until you have bought something.
14-day refund on either licence, no questions asked. The app confirms your licence with our server now and then — what that means, before you buy.
Requires macOS 14 or later and a MacBook Pro with a Liquid Retina XDR display, or a Pro Display XDR. 25 models are in the support list.
Questions
The things people ask first.
Is there a free trial?
Yes — 3 days at full strength, and you do not have to do anything to start it. Download the app from this site and the trial begins the first time you open it: no account, no card, no key to paste, nothing to sign up for.
When the 3 days are up, the app does not lock you out and does not stop. Instead the app keeps boosting part of your screen, and that part gets smaller week by week, so you keep seeing the difference between the part that is boosted and the part that is not, every day, on your own screen. Buying a licence gives you the whole screen back immediately. There is nothing to cancel and no account to close, because you never made one — and until you buy, the app never contacts our servers at all.
The Mac App Store version has no trial. A paid app on the App Store is bought before it is downloaded, so there is nothing to try first — that is Apple's model, not our choice. The trial is in the download on this site.
What does it cost?
Two choices: 9,99 € a year, as a subscription that renews automatically until you cancel it, or 49 € once for a licence that never renews and has nothing to cancel. It is the same app either way, with the same features, on the same three Macs.
On the yearly licence, cancelling is one step from the link in your receipt and you do not have to tell us why. Cancelling stops the next payment and nothing else — the licence runs to the end of the year you have paid for, and after that the app stops boosting until a licence is active again. Nothing is deleted and your settings stay where they are.
There is a 14-day refund on both, no questions asked, and the trial above costs nothing at all.
Is it safe for my display?
It uses the same brightness range macOS already drives your panel to when you
play an HDR video — nothing beyond it. The app adjusts the display's gamma ramp
through CGSetDisplayTransferByTable, a public Core Graphics function,
and holds a tiny transparent window open so macOS keeps granting the display its
extended range. Both are ordinary, documented macOS behaviour.
What we have not done is a long-term panel study, and no honest developer has. If your Mac already shows HDR video for hours at a time, this puts the panel under the same load, no more.
Does it drain the battery?
Yes — a brighter screen costs power, and we will not pretend otherwise. We have not yet measured the draw with an instrument, so we do not publish a percentage.
The app ships with a battery guard: pick a threshold between 10 % and 50 % and the boost switches itself off below it, and comes back when you plug in. Closing the lid also releases the boost.
Does it use private Apple APIs?
No. Everything it touches is public and documented: Core Graphics gamma
tables for the brightness curve, a 1×1 pixel EDR trigger window for the headroom,
SMAppService for launch at login, IOKit power sources for the battery
guard.
This matters for two reasons: private frameworks break on macOS updates, and
they are rejected by the Mac App Store. For comparison, Vivid's binary links
against DisplayServices, which is a private framework.
Will it work on my Mac?
It works on MacBook Pro models with a Liquid Retina XDR display — the 14-inch and 16-inch machines from 2021 onwards — plus the Pro Display XDR.
We are deliberate about the difference between measured, supported and known to be broken by macOS. One model has actually been measured on a bench so far, and we say which. The compatibility page lists every model in those three columns.
Why is it disabled on the M5 Pro and M5 Max?
Because macOS 26.3 broke the mechanism on those chips, and we would rather refuse than take your money for something that cannot work.
On Mac17,6, Mac17,7, Mac17,8 and
Mac17,9, gamma tables are still stored correctly at the Core Graphics
level but are never applied to the display pipeline. It is not specific to us: the
same defect hits f.lux, MonitorControl and DisplayCAL. It is documented on the
Apple Developer Forums (thread 819331) and filed as FB22273730, FB22273782 and
FB23444164; all were still open in August 2026. The M5 without Pro or Max is not
affected.
Does it change my colours?
It raises the whole tone curve, so whites and light tones get brighter. What it will not do is flatten your highlights.
The boost factor is capped by a ceiling computed from the headroom your panel actually reports, so the curve cannot be pushed past the point where the brightest tones would collapse into a single value. That is a structural property of how the factor is chosen, not a setting you have to get right. What we have not published is a colorimeter ΔE measurement of the result, and we will not quote one until we have taken it.
How is it different from Vivid and BrightIntosh?
Three things: the boost is capped by your panel's real headroom instead of a fixed multiplier, it reaches full brightness faster than either of them, and it tells you what it could not verify.
We publish the measurements rather than the adjectives — compared with Vivid and compared with BrightIntosh, including the parts where they are ahead.
Does the app need an internet connection?
Not to run day to day, but yes, now and then. The app confirms your licence with our server every 45 days, in the background. You are not asked to do anything and there is no dialog to click.
Between those checks it works offline — on a plane, in a cabin, on a firewalled network — for up to 180 days, and says nothing at all for the first 105 of them. We would rather say the awkward half plainly: if the app cannot reach us for longer than 180 days, the boost stops until it can. It comes straight back the next time the check succeeds, and you never lose your key.
None of this happens during the trial. Until you enter a licence key you have bought, the app never contacts our servers and we store nothing about you — no identifier, no installation count, nothing.
The check carries your licence and a one-way pseudonym of the Mac it is running on. It does not carry your name, your email or anything about how you use the app. The privacy policy lists exactly what we store.
Use the display you actually bought.
3 days at full strength, free, on your own screen — that is a better answer than anything on this page, and it keeps going after that on a smaller part of the screen. Then 9,99 € a year, or 49 € once and never again, with a 14-day refund either way.