SwitchResX 4.14.2 — Mac version

macOS hides dozens of usable screen resolutions from you. SwitchResX brings them back and lets you save each one as a profile tied to a specific colour setting.

Runs on Macs from 10.10 to current Apple Silicon

• macOS 10.10 or newer, all the way up to current Apple Silicon machines
• Works with Retina displays, projectors, HDTVs, plasma panels and third-party monitors
• Runs on Intel and Apple Silicon Macs

Right-click the menu bar icon for hidden resolutions

Right-click the menu bar icon and pick a resolution your display can handle, even ones Apple hides. You can create custom resolutions for picky external screens, tie a resolution to a colour profile, and script display changes with AppleScript. The latest update sorts out a few rough edges on machines with no display attached and a bug when deleting a Display Set that another set relied on.

Mismatched external monitors are the main use case

It is not an app everybody needs. If you use a single built-in MacBook screen at default resolution, you can stop reading. But a few groups of users lean on it daily.

People with mismatched external monitors. A cheap 1080p panel next to a Retina display often looks blurry or cramped. SwitchResX lets you push the cheaper screen to a scaled resolution that matches the pixel density of your main display more closely, so windows dragged between them do not jump in size.

Digital artists and photographers. Colour work demands a calibrated profile locked to a known resolution. The app lets you pair a custom resolution with a colour profile and toggle both with one click. No more fiddling with System Settings when you switch from editing to proofing.

People using HDTVs as monitors. macOS often misreads a 4K television and offers only 1080p or a stretched mess. A custom timing in SwitchResX sorts that out. Once saved, the TV behaves like a proper computer display.

AppleScript tinkerers. If you already automate parts of your Mac workflow, you can script resolution changes and tie them to specific apps, folder actions or keyboard shortcuts. SwitchResX opens that door wide.

EasyRes is simpler, BetterDisplay adds brightness controls

Three apps tend to come up when people talk about Mac display utilities: SwitchResX, EasyRes and BetterDisplay. They overlap but serve different needs.

EasyRes is the simplest of the three. It sits in the menu bar and lists available resolutions. No custom timings, no colour profile binding, no scripting. If you only want quick access to standard scaled resolutions, EasyRes does the job with zero fuss. But it cannot create a resolution your display does not already advertise.

BetterDisplay is the modern contender. It handles HiDPI scaling well, supports dummy displays for screen sharing, and manages brightness on third-party monitors. It feels more like a daily comfort tool. What it lacks is the deep custom-resolution editor SwitchResX is built around. BetterDisplay works with what the system sees; SwitchResX teaches the system to see something new.

SwitchResX is the oldest and most technical of the bunch. The interface feels utilitarian rather than polished, and the custom-resolution panel expects you to understand timing values. That is not a flaw — it is the point. If you search for a switchresx download because your projector refuses to accept anything but an oddball refresh rate, neither EasyRes nor BetterDisplay can help.

Idles at about 40 MB of memory on Intel and Apple Silicon

SwitchResX runs as a background daemon and a menu bar application. On an Intel Mac from 2015 it idles at around 40 MB of memory and a fraction of one percent of CPU. On Apple Silicon the numbers are similar. You will not feel it.

Switching resolutions is snappy — usually under a second. Custom resolutions with hand-tuned timings sometimes take a moment longer while the display renegotiates the signal, but that is the hardware, not the app.

Stability is solid in daily work. The app has been maintained for years and version 4.14.2 cleans up long-standing edge cases. On older macOS releases, the preference pane can occasionally refuse to load until you relaunch System Settings, though this is rare on Ventura and newer. If you rely on a switchresx free setup you put together yourself, expect the same behaviour as the registered version — nothing is crippled or slowed down.

Plug in a 4K monitor and get sharper 3200× scaling

You have just plugged a second-hand 4K monitor into your Mac mini. System Settings offers 1920 x 1080, 2560 x 1440 and a blurry "4K" option that makes text look like it was smeared with butter. You want 3200 x 1800 — enough workspace for a timeline and a browser side by side, with readable text.

You open the SwitchResX pane, select the external display from the left column, and click the Custom Resolutions tab. The plus button opens an editor. You tick "Scaled resolution" and type 3200 x 1800. The app suggests timing values based on the display's EDID. You leave them alone and save.

Back on the Current Resolutions tab, your new resolution appears in the list. You select it. The screen blinks once and comes back sharp. Text is crisp, windows snap to the right size, and nothing is squashed. You tick the checkbox to make the resolution available from the menu bar icon for quick switching later.

Next you bind it to a colour profile. You switch to the Color tab, pick the profile you calibrated last week, and save the pair as a Display Set called "Edit bay." You drag that set onto your video editor's icon in the Applications tab. From now on, launching the editor automatically switches the monitor to 3200 x 1800 with your calibrated colour.

Twenty minutes of work, one annoyance gone for good. That is the kind of session SwitchResX was built for — not tinkering for its own sake, but fixing a real problem and getting back to the job.

• Stopped the app from repeatedly saving its own settings when no display was attached
• Fixed an issue with displays that showed no name in macOS
• Fixed a bug that appeared when deleting a Display Set used after another Display Set
• Quitting the Dock is now allowed when disabling a display on Apple Silicon Macs

• macOS 10.10 or later
• Intel or Apple Silicon Mac