Any resolution on your Mac.
None of the blur.

macOS draws your desktop into an off-screen buffer and then rescales that buffer to fit your panel. For its default sizes the buffer is bigger than the panel, so the result is downscaled and stays sharp. For most other sizes the buffer is smaller and gets stretched up — which is the softness you're seeing. Fovea only ever offers sizes where the buffer is at least as big as your panel.

On an external monitor, Fovea reads every size the panel publishes, grades each one against the panel's real pixel count, and lists only the sharp ones — so the soft, upscaled sizes macOS mixes into the same menu are simply never offered to you. On the 4K panel we test on that's roughly 100%, 128%, 150%, 167%, 188% and 200%, all sharp. Which steps exist is up to your panel; adding steps a panel doesn't publish at all is currently a built-in-display feature.

Apple Silicon built-in displays ship with three sharp sizes — 100%, 168% and 200% — and nothing usable in between. Fovea adds 125%, 133%, 150% and 175% as real native modes that macOS renders itself, so the in-between sizes are as sharp as the ones Apple ships. This is the one change that needs a restart, once.

That's a fair description of it. Windows and Linux let you ask for 125% or 150% and scale the interface by that fraction. macOS only ever draws at 1× or 2×, and gets the sizes in between by resizing the finished picture — which is where the softness comes from. Fovea gives you the same in-between sizes — 125%, 133%, 150%, 175% — but reaches them the way macOS actually prefers: real modes drawn at full density and shrunk down, never stretched up. Same control, none of the blur.

That warning means macOS is now drawing a bigger picture than your panel and shrinking it to fit — which is exactly the work that keeps text sharp, and exactly what Fovea's sharp sizes ask for. It costs some GPU time and a little battery; on Apple Silicon it isn't something you notice in normal use. macOS shows the same warning for sizes it ships itself. The sizes that cost you nothing are the blurry ones.

Because font smoothing isn't what's wrong. That command changes how glyph edges are drawn, while the blur you're looking at happens after everything is drawn, when the whole finished desktop is stretched to fit your panel. No text setting can undo a stretch — it can only change what gets stretched. What fixes it is picking a size that never gets stretched upward, which is the only kind Fovea lists.

No, and nothing expires either. The download is free and public, but Fovea needs a $20 key to do anything — you buy the key once and it arrives by email. Nothing is time-limited, so nothing can run out on you. What you can check before paying is all on this page: the blur comparison runs on your own screen at your own pixel density, and the requirements table says which Macs and displays gain the most.

Two things decide that. Fovea needs macOS 13 or later. And the sizes it offers come from your panel: on an external monitor it lists the sharp modes your display already publishes, and on an Apple Silicon built-in it adds 125%, 133%, 150% and 175%. The requirements table above is blunt about which setups gain little. If it does nothing for you, drag it to the Trash — but if you added the extra scale steps, remove them from its menu first, because that is the one thing Fovea installs outside your home folder.

Fovea never turns a display off — that is the one operation that can leave you with a black screen and no way to click. Everything it does is a setting macOS already supports, and Reset everything undoes all of it in one click, even after a crash.

Only for the extra scale steps on a built-in panel, and only once. macOS reads a display's list of available sizes when it first detects the screen, and a soldered-in panel is only ever detected at boot — logging out is not enough, because it does not restart the process that holds that list. Everything else in Fovea applies instantly, with no restart and no dialog.

None. Fovea never asks for Screen Recording, Accessibility, files, or anything else. If macOS ever shows you a permission prompt because of Fovea, that's a bug — tell us.

The App Store requires sandboxing, and a sandboxed app cannot reach the display APIs this depends on. There is no version of this feature that can ship there. Fovea is signed and notarized by Apple instead, which is the same check Gatekeeper runs on App Store apps.

Download the disk image, drag Fovea to your Applications folder, open it, and paste the key from your email. There is no installer and no account — the menu-bar icon appears and every display on your Mac is already in it. Fovea is signed and notarized by Apple, so it opens without the Gatekeeper warning unsigned apps get.

No, Fovea is closed source. What you can check without the source: it is signed and notarized by Apple, it asks for no permissions of any kind, and it makes exactly two kinds of network request — checking for a new version, and activating your key. There is no account, no analytics and nothing to opt out of.

None. There is no account, no analytics and no telemetry. The app makes exactly two kinds of network request: checking for a new version, and activating your key once.