Color Depth

Color Depth lets you choose how precisely colors are represented in the image macOS renders for a display. It changes the framebuffer’s bit depth while keeping the current desktop resolution. This rendered precision and the color depth sent over the display connection are related, but they are not always the same.

Where to find it: App Menu > display > Color Depth, usually under the more-options chevron.

The dedicated submenu is available on Intel Macs when a connected display offers multiple depth alternatives. A mirror target also needs the mirror-target resolution option. On Apple silicon, use Color Mode for connection-depth choices.

Change depth

Select the depth row you want to use. BetterDisplay switches to the corresponding display mode immediately, without a separate Apply step. The menu keeps the current resolution, refresh-rate representation and HiDPI class, and offers one choice for each eligible depth.

For the rendering background, see how macOS scaling, HiDPI and LoDPI work.

Keeping those properties together makes it easier to compare depth choices for the setup you are already using. If other depths exist only with different modes, a note points you to Display Mode. That full list shows the resolution and refresh-rate conditions associated with those alternatives.

The change also updates streams and Picture in Picture, along with any enabled resolution and refresh-rate protection. Group UI scale matching can apply when the mode changes.

Which choices are included

Unsafe modes are normally omitted unless the current mode is already unsafe. Invalid modes are omitted unless you enable the corresponding Display Mode menu option. These restrictions affect which rows are available; they do not create depth options that the display does not offer.

Depth, connection format and HDR

A framebuffer depth tells you about the precision of the rendered image. It does not, by itself, tell you the panel’s physical precision or the depth used by the connection carrying the image to it.

For example, on a system that exposes both values, the connection may use a lower depth than the framebuffer. The GPU can use dithering to help represent colors across that difference. This is why a framebuffer-depth selection should not be read as a guarantee about every stage of the display path.

Selecting a higher depth also does not turn on HDR. HDR capability and the active HDR mode are separate parts of the display configuration.

Additional information

This section explains which features require Pro and how availability differs between Mac platforms.

Features requiring Pro license

Selecting a framebuffer depth in this submenu does not itself require Pro.

Platform compatibility

The dedicated Color Depth submenu is available only on Intel Macs, and only when the connected display offers eligible alternatives. Apple silicon uses the separate Color Mode interface for connection-depth choices.

Available depths depend on the display and current mode. A processor family alone does not establish a panel’s physical precision, connection depth or HDR capability.