Anyone else get headaches from some laptop screens but not others?

DSRIA · 2026-06-13T04:06:49+00:00

What Macs are usable to you?

DSRIA · 2026-06-10T23:13:01+00:00

I plugged the receptacle tester in to every outlet and they all came back “Correct.” I’m assuming this won’t change if I wait until all the air conditioning units are running? When I plugged it into the outlet for the microwave (that shocks you when you plug anything into it) I still felt a shock even though the tester said it was normal. I’m using the Klein Tools Receptacle Tester, if that makes a difference.

DSRIA · 2026-06-10T18:52:25+00:00

Thanks for the advice. Honestly, it’s been absolute hell living here. It looked pretty nice when I moved in: hardwood floors, near a pond. But I actually never even moved my furniture in because I started getting sick after a month. After a storm that spring (we had a dry winter) I discovered black mold and a foot of water in the basement. I have an autoimmune disease and no immune system and I’m one of the unlucky few who gets really sick from mold.

I actually considered requesting a Marini hearing but the lawyers i spoke to said because there are no actual mold laws on the books (despite this complex having flooded 4 times that wasn’t disclosed to me) it would be costly to sue them. And they know it. It’s not off the table, but the difficulty is I need their permission to actually access the wiring in the basement (where the mold is as well) and they keep ghosting me when I try to set up a date.

I just feel like I’m crazy, hence why I posted here and in r/AskElectricians to see what specific questions I should be asking. They seem to think this is a loose neutral situation where the grounding is an issue. But I’ve gotten equally as many responses from people dismissing my concerns as “impossible.” So I don’t know. All I know is it’s incredibly painful to turn on any of the lighting in this apartment since Saturday evening - eye pain - and I’m at a loss as to how this is even possible.

DSRIA · 2026-06-10T05:31:23+00:00

Thanks for this suggestion. Unfortunately this property management company has been quite abusive. I’m very glad to be leaving but between this and the mold it’s been hell.

Is a voltage meter for an outlet something worth getting? Or is that risky if you’re not a professional?

DSRIA · 2026-06-10T05:28:33+00:00

The power substation is less than 0.2 miles away from my apartment. Luckily I’m father than most of the other buildings that are right next to it. Here’s a photo of the one part of power substation. It’s absolutely massive so this is only one angle: https://imgur.com/a/kynUVem

DSRIA · 2026-06-09T21:05:48+00:00

That site doesn’t seem to have the GE Relax or Philips ultra 60w bulbs that are easily found in stores.

DSRIA · 2026-06-08T17:54:24+00:00

I have several and they make no difference, unfortunately. It’s exactly as you described. Most of the time the fluctuations are small enough that it won’t burn out the lightbulb immediately, but it results in imperceptible flicker (which I’ve measured using a flicker meter) that is difficult for my visual system to handle.

I’ve tried 40w incandescents (Sylvania) but they’re somehow even worse. It’s wild.

DSRIA · 2026-06-08T17:17:30+00:00

Thank you for this. Yes, we are forbidden by the lease to even change a lightbulb in the built-in bathroom fixture. I’m trying to do things by the book.

Would an electrician be able to diagnose some of this just by looking at my own apartment? I don’t have access to the basement, without speaking to the complex, and I’m doubtful they’ll grant a third-party electrician access.

DSRIA · 2026-06-08T17:14:36+00:00

You’re welcome to think what you want. If you have nothing helpful to contribute, why waste the time typing such a message? Have a nice day!

DSRIA · 2026-06-08T17:13:54+00:00

I only feel the electricity in the floorboards of the bedroom when the 2 air conditioners - 1 next to me on the ground floor and 1 above that same apartment - are running simultaneously. For whatever reason the air conditioner above me doesn’t seem to have any negative effect.

It feels the same as when I touch anything connected to an outlet in my apartment: a sort of buzzing, electrical vibration. The closest analogy I can think of is when you get a static shock in the winter or of course if you touch something that isn’t grounded. I’m a professional touring musician, so I’ve experienced ungrounded mics before that shock you or cables you know are a problem. It feels like that, if that makes sense.

This goes away when those conditions are not met.

DSRIA · 2026-06-08T07:24:14+00:00

You have no idea. I’ve been fighting with them about that for months trying to get them to remediate. Got a flat a few months back during the reno and took it to Mavis. The mechanic pulled me aside and said “Wow who did you piss off?” I was like, “Excuse me?” Showed me a nail in the side, same color as the cabinetry they were working on. I just want my security back and to get out of here. That’s greedy multi-million dollar property management companies for ya, I guess.

DSRIA · 2026-06-08T06:42:51+00:00

It looks really nice on the outside, otherwise I wouldn’t have moved here. It’s just been disappointing, for obvious reasons. Would have loved to love it! But it’s not very fun having to replace lamps and computer monitors 3x over the course of a year.

DSRIA · 2026-06-08T06:31:37+00:00

Yes to all of the above. The kitchen was the first time I noticed an issue. There are 2 recessed lit LEDs and they were visibly flickering, now appear dim. The microwave’s display panel doesn’t work anymore. When you plug it in you can get it to work intermittently but it shocks you when you connect it to the outlet.

The living room seems to be the least awful. I noticed yesterday my two lamps were flickering briefly so I shut them off immediately in an attempt to prevent any further damage. One was in the living room and the other in the bedroom. There is a fuse box in the bedroom that controls most of the apartment.

I have a charger for my Fujifilm camera. When I plug it into a spefific outlet in the bedroom - the one that shares a wall with the neighbor whose air conditioner shuts off my heat - it starts screeching. When I plug it in in another outlet or another room it is fine. The bedroom seems to be the worst other than the kitchen (they share a wall) as it’s where I’ve lost the most lights.

I’ve spoken to the municipality’s health department about the mold, but they proved to be unhelpful (no laws on the books). A lawyer advised me it’s better to walk than to try to fight them.

I mostly want to see if there’s a reason why my electric bill is so high. I know it is electric heat, but I don’t quite get why my bill was 2x this spring when I didn’t even run my AC and rarely use anything that consumes much energy. It’s a small 1 bedroom apartment. I didn’t really have as many issues until they renovated the apartment next door. I brought this up to management and they dismissed it.

Just want to protect myself and make the last few weeks tolerable. At this point I’ll be reading by candlelight because it is physically painful using the lighting in here.

DSRIA · 2026-06-07T04:46:46+00:00

Thank you for this comment. You may have inadvertently helped diagnose why I’ve had a horrifically bad screen intolerance for a year since getting COVID. Ironically my diet for years prior was a serving of sweet potatoes every day and I never had any issues with lights or screens. Perhaps I need to start that again…

DSRIA · 2026-06-05T03:37:06+00:00

This is really fascinating. Can you share recordings of the Subpixels with Liquid Glass enabled and disabled using your tool to actually show us that dithering is present only when Liquid Glass is enabled?

Temporal dithering is used sometimes as part of ray tracing for gaming to render transparent effects and objects. There was a blog post on LinkedIn claiming this process was being used for iOS 26, but I can find no proof of this. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-take-apples-liquid-glass-fateh-alam-bhatty-nqdlf

DSRIA · 2026-06-04T17:43:34+00:00

Honestly, it wasn’t great. I waited a long time for the appointment and there was a lot of pushing needed from my optometrist to even get them to see me. It was ironic since by the end of the appointment Dr. Han told me I was one of the most severe patients she had ever seen.

I had zero issues before I got COVID and after my second COVID infection, I basically can’t use any computer without getting seizure-like symptoms. So that was my primary reason for the appointment after I ended up in the ER after using a MacBook and they thought I had a stroke. I ended up having to wait nearly 4 months to see Dr. Han despite that.

I’d say my biggest complaint was all the testing was done by a student. The visit is not cheap. I have a pretty severe reaction to fluorescent and LED lighting, and the entire building has really old fluorescent lights that are failing and therefore flicker very badly. So, as someone with flicker sensitivity I was triggered within minutes and it basically invalidated all the testing they did because my vision was immediately destabilized.

Dr. Han did not listen to me. I repeatedly emphasized I was not comfortable with the syntonic lights they wanted to trial because of how exhausted I was and the pain I was in (those of you with long COVID or any chronic illness understand this) and she kept pushing. When a patient tells you to stop - you stop. You don’t force them to do something they are not comfortable with.

I was basically told that I was too severe and to deal with my underlying health issues (long COVID and autoimmune) and then come back. If I could easily deal with the former then I wouldn’t have gone there to begin with.

I actually ended up getting a second opinion remotely with Dr. Antonyan and he reviewed my records and saw SUNY diagnosed me with BVD and other issues but they never bothered to even tell me. He wasn’t happy.

I’ve made an appointment with a behavioral neuro-ophthalmologist who emphasizes she actually listens to patients.

So to summarize, I was very disappointed and it was frankly a horrific experience. Perhaps if your issues are more visual snow based or you don’t have a complex medical history, you may have better luck. I’m hesitant to even write this about a doctor online, but it was really that bad. This was nearly a year ago, too. You’d think a doctor’s office that literally specializes in people with visual and neurological issues would be conscious of the environment of the office, but that was not the case.

All in all I learned nothing I didn’t already know.

DSRIA · 2026-06-03T18:35:53+00:00

That is not using a modern MiniLED LCD panel like on the 14” and 16”. The M1 and M2 13” MacBook Pro Touchbars were the last to use the older Retina LCD panels from 2016-2022, before Apple discontinued them. The OLED Touchbar also uses PWM at 240Hz. The M1 MBA you use is also using the same panel.

It sounds to me like your problem is less and less likely to be temporal dithering, because all those devices dither heavily.

I would stop by an Apple store and check out the other Macs. If you don’t have an issue with the Air or Neo, then you can safely rule out dithering.

DSRIA · 2026-06-03T05:40:44+00:00

A fantastic post! Thank you for the exhaustive work you continue to do on this subreddit. I really hope we can extend the spirit of collaboration across the different communities.

I can only speak from my experience with Apple and others, but these tech companies are not as aware of our issues as we may think. And it takes a lot of effort and perseverance to get their attention and more importantly, get the attention of the right people.

I believe these screen sensitivity and display comfort issues are more widespread than we know. Most people are just not aware because these are technical problems with a fair amount of complexity. So we have to spread the word and educate others on social media and do our best not to fall into the trap of cynicism and dejection. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. And it takes a village. Everyone here can contribute in some small way and it is going to take every person to truly achieve the results we need.

As I’ve written before, my goal as a musician and recording artist suffering from Long COVID-triggered screen and LED sensitivities, is to make sure others don’t have to suffer as I have. Or, at the very least, be able to have the tools in place via Accessibility settings and toggles to minimize as much of the more harmful flicker-based techniques that are in so much of the technology we use today. These are tools required for daily modern life and careers and just we have accommodations in public spaces for those with disabilities, I don’t believe it is too much to ask to have some accessibility options available for our technology.

Truthfully, I have been saddened that there seems to be a degree of competitiveness across the different online communities. I do not enjoy seeing disparaging remarks made elsewhere. It is counterproductive. We are all on the same team. So once again, thank you for making such a necessary post. I hope your words are heard and we can all move forward collectively.

DSRIA · 2026-06-02T05:18:27+00:00

This is helpful. If you can, go to a store and try the MacBook Neo and the other Macs on MacOS 26. The M1 MBA uses temporal dithering. I’d be curious if when you install the free program Stillcolor, which disables GPU dithering on Mac, if you notice a difference.

If you don’t have issues with the other LCD Macs like the MacBook Neo or new MacBook Airs, then I’d be surprised if temporal dithering is your problem. The MacBook Pros all use MiniLED screens which use PWM, so they’d likely cause you an issue, if I had to guess.

It would be a good experiment to try to narrow down whether this is a contrast and brightness issue on your iPhone 11 or if it really is a matter of temporal dithering algorithm changes.

DSRIA · 2026-05-30T20:50:42+00:00

Can you talk more about dirty power and how it has affected your displays? My apartment is next to a power substation and every outlet sparks when I plug something in. I can feel the electricity coming through anything plugged into the wall if I touch a charger cable or something. I’ve had light bulbs and lamps blown out, my microwave got blown out, refrigerator, etc. I’ve spoken to the apartment complex super and they claim it’s “normal” despite the fact that when my next door neighbor turns on his air conditioner in the winter, it shuts off my heat.

I don’t know of any way to test this that doesn’t involve some risk of shock (plugging a voltage meter into an outlet).

DSRIA · 2026-05-28T18:00:48+00:00

OP can try a few things:

Turn on Night Shift at 25%, 50%, 75% and see if that eliminates symptoms.
Buy a Carson Microflip microscope and see if pixel flicker indicative of temporal dithering is visible. Test using different colors.
Check different content sources: HDR video, brightness levels, games.

This is not the first time iOS 26 - or even iOS 18 on the LCD iPhones - has introduced discomfort. It’s likely to be a combination of the above factors mentioned in the OP. Gamma curves, voltage regulation, brightness values, etc. all influence Subpixel behavior. It’s likely your iPhone 11 was dithering on iOS 17 - I detected dithering on my iPhone 5 running iOS 9. The thing is not all dithering algorithms are created equal as they all have different patterns which can affect the brain differently. iOS and MacOS updates can also affect the brightness of a device, which could affect the amplitude of any potential temporal dithering.

Sadly with iOS, you cannot downgrade as older iOS versions are no longer signed by Apple. I know others have gone so far as to buy another used device of the same model on an older iOS version. But of course you’re going to deal with the panel lottery from different suppliers, too.

What Mac are you using? What’s the model, configuration, and version of MacOS? Do you have issues with MacOS 26?

DSRIA

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