A technology blog Random Thoughts published a post this month highlighting a resolution adaptation flaw affecting MacBooks with notch screens, causing numerous games to display blurry visuals when running in fullscreen mode. This issue stems from a known but unresolved system API error in Apple's software that has persisted for two years without a fix.

According to the blog post, when most games launch on MacBooks with notch screens, they retrieve all available display resolutions through Apple's CGDisplayCopyAllDisplayModes API and default to selecting the first resolution in the list. The problem is that this default resolution typically includes the notch and menu bar areas, but the actual game window cannot render in these regions, causing the image height to be forcibly compressed and resulting in blurry, distorted visuals.

In macOS, Apple divides the display area into three concepts: full display range, safe area, and fullscreen available area. While NSScreen provides a safeAreaInsets property to mark the safe area, this area doesn't completely overlap with the actual fullscreen available area. Developers relying solely on the safe area still encounter resolution mismatch issues. Additionally, the resolution list returned by CGDisplayCopyAllDisplayModes mixes together resolutions for "fullscreen range" and "area below menu bar" without clear distinction, further increasing the risk of incorrect selection.

The blog post tested multiple mainstream games affected by this issue, including "Shadow of the Tomb Raider," "No Man's Sky," "Riven," and "Stray," all showing cases where the default resolution doesn't match the actual rendering area, causing stretched or blurry visuals. Some games like "Stray" and "Control" have circumvented part of the problem through "custom resolution lists," but haven't completely resolved it.

Notably, "Cyberpunk 2077" correctly defaults to 16:10 resolution, while "World of Warcraft" can directly render the entire screen including the notch area due to using an older API.

To address this issue, the author proposed temporary solutions. Regular players can manually select 16:10 aspect ratio resolutions in game settings to avoid the default "compressed output." Developers can use NSScreen's safeAreaInsets property combined with custom algorithms to filter appropriate resolutions. While this method might lose some common resolutions (such as 4:3), it can significantly reduce visual distortion.

The blog post notes that the related defect (FB13375033) was reported to Apple in September 2023. Despite Apple and manufacturers being aware of the issue, it remains officially unresolved to this day.