After trying out Vivid 1.0 on my MacBook Pro 14-inch (2021) back in April, which expands the brightness to take advantage of the HDR display beyond Apple’s settings, the developers have brought out version 2.0, which remakes the app from the ground up.
In a tweet (opens in new tab) announcing the free update, this means that when you enable the expanded brightness setting, it’s not as much of a strain on your CPU, so your battery usage will be higher than it was before when using Vivid.
There’s also a new ‘Eclipse’ setting, which does the opposite in being able to make your display much darker, so you can see some of your content without having to switch the display off completely.
Alongside this, its two developers, Jordi Bruin (opens in new tab) and Ben Harraway (opens in new tab) have released Vivid’s web browser on iPhone that was previously in testing, allowing you to take your iPhone’s brightness beyond Apple’s settings as well.
No, it doesn’t harm your display
Vivid’s web browser has slightly improved since my testing, as you can do a Google search without having to go to the website itself, similar to Safari and every other web browser.
Yet it’s the macOS version that I’ve been enjoying more than usual since this new update. As I use my MacBook Pro 14-inch (2021) every day, I like to use Vivid when it’s plugged in, but there have been occasions when I’m watching a video, and the brightness would revert back to Apple’s settings.
Since using the new update, I’ve not come across this, which is already a win for me, as I don’t have to close and reopen Vivid for the video to play at a higher brightness.
There’s an understandable fear with these apps that they could ruin your Mac’s display as it goes beyond Apple’s brightness settings, but developer Bruin has reassured me previously that there’s no truth to this – your display will not burn out after excessive use.
After using Vivid weekly since April 2022, my Mac hasn’t succumbed to any issues, it’s only made using macOS much better, especially when it came to the summer season in the UK where its expanded brightness defeated the Sun’s own brightness.
If Bruin and Harraway are thinking of the next steps for the app, I’d be curious to see how Vivid would work on an M2 iPad Pro with its display. However we might be restricted to a web browser there similar to Vivid on iOS – but one can hope there’s a solution to using Vivid on other apps than just browsing the web on an iPad soon.
