BrighterMac Pricing

Comparison

Vivid or BrighterMac: what is the measured difference?

Three measured differences: our boost factor is capped by the headroom your panel reports instead of being fixed at ×1.45, our binary links no private Apple frameworks while Vivid's links DisplayServices, and we reach full boost in 2.28 s against Vivid's 2.4 s. Vivid is ahead on automation and on integration with the rest of your Mac.

Everything below was measured on 20 September 2026 on a MacBook Pro 16" M1 Max (MacBookPro18,2) running macOS 26, against Vivid 2.18.1. We measured the shipping app's behaviour — gamma tables read back from the system, timings, link tables. We did not decompile it.

Where Vivid is ahead

Vivid automates. It can follow a schedule, react to sunset, and behave differently per app, and it exposes itself to Shortcuts and the command line. We have none of that. If you want your brightness to change without you touching it, that is a real reason to choose Vivid today, and no measurement on this page changes it.

Vivid also has years of shipping behind it and a user base that has found the edges. We are new. That is not a technical argument, but it is a fair one.

Where the two differ in what they do to your display

The factor. Vivid applies a fixed gamma multiplier of 1.45 in a single step. We take the lower of our design point and a ceiling derived from the headroom the display reports, so the curve stops before the brightest tones would be pinned to one value. At full boost we measured Vivid holding 318 of 1,024 gamma entries — 31.1 % of the curve — at maximum.

We should be exact about our own figure: the 0.1.0 build in that measurement clipped the same 31.1 %, because the ceiling was added afterwards. The current engine cannot clip by construction, and we will publish the re-measured number when it has been taken on the bench rather than estimate it here.

Private frameworks. Vivid's binary links against DisplayServices, which is a private Apple framework. Ours does not: the brightness path is CGSetDisplayTransferByTable and the headroom is requested with an ordinary HDR window. Private frameworks are rejected by the Mac App Store and can stop working at any macOS update — which is a risk to weigh, not a verdict on the app.

Honesty about hardware. Since macOS 26.3, gamma tables are stored but never applied on M5 Pro and M5 Max. We block those models. We also label every supported model as measured or merely supported, because we have only had one on a bench.

What both of them do

Both restore your display bit-for-bit when they quit, and both are irrelevant to that question after a force-quit, because macOS resets the gamma table itself within 19 ms. Anyone selling bit-identical restore as a feature is selling you the operating system.

One note on price

Vivid's price is not the same in every place it is published — the website, the press kit and the Mac App Store listing have carried different figures. Check the channel you actually buy through.

Ours are 9,99 € a year, renewed automatically, or 49 € once with no renewal. Vivid is a single payment, and so is every other app in this category: we are the only one asking for a yearly licence, and the lifetime price is the one to hold up against Vivid's. The reason we ask at all is that this mechanism depends on macOS behaviour Apple has already broken once, and keeping it working is continuing work rather than a finished object — the pricing section says it in full. If you disagree with that reasoning, it is a fair reason to buy Vivid.

Both of them let you look before you pay

Vivid's free mode is Splitscreen: it boosts half the screen, with no time limit, so you can see the difference for as long as you like before deciding. Ours is the other shape of the same courtesy — the download is the complete app, free and at full strength for 3 days, starting the first time you open it, and after that the app keeps boosting part of your screen, and that part gets smaller week by week rather than stopping. No account, no card, no key to paste. We also have a split-screen check built in, so you can make the same side-by-side comparison Vivid's free mode is built around.

The table

  BrighterMac Vivid
Boost factor 1 Capped by your panel’s headroom Fixed ×1.45
Highlight clipping at full boost 2 Capped by construction 31.1 % of the curve
Time from launch to full boost 3 2.28 s 2.4 s
Private Apple frameworks 4 None Links DisplayServices
Restores your display bit-for-bit on quit 5 Yes Yes
Refuses to run where macOS is broken 6 Yes, by model not measured
Tells you when it could not verify the effect Yes No
Built-in visual check that the boost is real 7 Yes No
Battery threshold you choose 10–50 %, seven steps No
Scheduling, sunset, per-app rules 8 No Yes
Shortcuts, CLI, URL scheme 9 No Yes
Backs off automatically when headroom drops 10 Yes, within 0.5 s No
What it costs 11 9,99 € a year, or 49 € once 10 € once (24.99 USD in the App Store)
Try it before paying 12 3 days at full strength, then less area Half the screen, no time limit
How the licence is checked 13 A signed document the app verifies itself A yes/no answer from a web service
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
How long it works with no network at all 15 Up to 180 days, and we publish the number Not documented
Source code you can read No No
  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Measured on the same MacBook Pro 16" M1 Max, mains power, at the versions listed below.
  4. Observed from the shipped binaries’ link tables. Private frameworks are rejected by the Mac App Store and can break on any macOS update.
  5. 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.
  6. The M5 Pro and M5 Max defect. We block those models rather than sell into a failure.
  7. A split-screen button that shows boosted and unboosted halves side by side.
  8. A real gap on our side. Vivid is ahead here and we are not going to hide it.
  9. Also a gap. If you automate your Mac, Vivid does more today.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.

Try ours if the measurements matter to you.

3 days at full strength, free, then 9,99 € a year or 49 € once. If you need scheduling more than you need a capped curve, use Vivid instead — we would rather say so than take the sale.

Try it free for 3 days Check your Mac first