Retina display menu full#
Retina display menu pro#

While it’s not officially supported, Retina Mac users can access truly huge amounts of screen real estate with the help of free third party utilities available to unlock the full native display resolutions, which on the 15″ model is a freakishly large 2880×1800 pixels. Super Sizing with Native Retina Resolutions External displays should automatically run at native resolution by default, unless another resolution has been specified. Those should appear by default within the System Preference panel, though you may need to detect connected displays yourself through an option hidden toggle in the Display settings. That said, if you intend to do something incredibly GPU intensive, you won’t want to use a ‘scaled’ resolution during that task, or else you’ll needlessly suffer a performance hit.Ĭhanging the built-in display resolution of a Mac will have no impact on external screens, which need to be set separately through the Displays preference panel that pops up on their own screen. That is perhaps true for graphics intensive games and GPU straining activity, but is otherwise completely unnoticeable in most usage, particularly for what most users are doing on their Macs. You’ll notice that once you change resolutions from “Best for Retina Display” to “Scaled” you’ll see a little message under the resolution options, stating the “Using a scaled resolution may affect performance” message.

The further “More Space” settings do provide for tons of usable screen real estate but can make things look small and difficult to read, while the “Larger Text” options can reduce screen real estate to the point where things feel cramped despite the super-crisp text. You can hold the “Option” key when clicking “Scaled” to see all options available.įor most users, the default setting or one towards “More Space” is usually the best option.

The options towards “More Space” are the most useful if you feel your screen is cramped, allowing for more windows, apps, and content to be visible on the display. Choose one of the other resolution options and close out of System Preferences.“Best (Retina)”, the default setting is 1440×900.4th over is 1680×1050 – a great alternative if you’re looking for more screen space without going too small.“More Space” is the equivalent to 1920×1200.Go to the “Display” tab and next to ‘Resolution:’ choose the “Scaled” radio button to reveal additional resolution options, including the following on a 15″:.Open System Preferences from the  Apple menu and choose “Displays”.

Our solution was to make Display Menu Pro controllable via AppleScript.ĪppleScript is a simple scripting language that is built right into OS X, and it lets you easily create scripts that can fulfill all your automation needs.Ĭheck out our example scripts below, and have a look at our mini-tutorial that shows you how you can use AppleScript and Automator to create system wide shortcuts for switching between a number of different resolutions.Each Retina MacBook Pro model offers these display settings, though the display panel size ultimately determines how many options you’ll get, with the larger 15″ screen having an additional selection available than the 13″ model.Ĭhange Retina Mac Screen Resolution for More Space or Larger Text We have put a lot of thought into that problem, trying to figure out a solution that would be both flexible enough to accommodate for all these different scenarios but at the same time easy enough that every one of our users can benefit from this feature. Logging in as a different user, starting a screencasting software, or things as easy as pressing a keyboard shortcut. Some of you have asked us for some way to change resolutions automatically when certain events happen:

Retina display menu pro#