Stuck to 5K resolution on my Mac

Mac Technical Support
1

I have a Macbook connected to a 5K display. When I run the game in MacOS it runs at full 5K resolution, which is too much for the integrated Intel graphics to handle (except when I set everything to low).

I’d like to lower the resolution but the dropdown doesn’t offer me any other options. Windowed mode helps of course but I’d like to play full screen, like 1440p or something. Editing Variables.txt doesn’t help either.

How can I run the game full screen at a lower resolution?

2

Hey, Yann! Moved you over to our Mac Technical Support forums. It may help to try forcing a lower resolution than using the retina display. Could you try the following?

  1. Open the Applications folder.
  2. Click the app once to select it, then choose Get Info from the File menu.
  3. From the Get Info window that opens, select the checkbox labeled ”Open in Low Resolution.”
  4. Close the Get Info window and open the app again.
3

Thank you I tried what you suggested. It seems to only work in windowed mode, full screen it’s still 5K. So if I stretch the window across the screen it runs smoothly, but it’s not completely full screen of course with the dock and menu bar still on screen.

Funny is when I set it to OpenGL it does look like lower resolution in full screen but it runs just as slow and the settings say it runs at 5K. I think it just downscales then.

Changing the desktop screen resolution makes no difference btw.

4

Thanks for giving that a try and the details, Yann! It’s a bit odd that the fullscreen option isn’t giving the resolution options. Are you able to change the resolution or does it seem any better in Windowed fullscreen by chance? If the option doesn’t appear, changing displaymode value to 1 should force it.

With this being a MacBook and an external monitor, it may not play too well with Starcraft. There’s a few questions I have to see if there may be a better workaround than Windowed mode, but we may be limited on our options here. Is the MacBook without the external monitor a Retina or 5K display? Are able to change the resolution on the MacBook display in Fullscreen mode? If so and the monitor is set to extended, is mirroring the display an option instead?

5

There does not seem to be any difference between Fullscreen and Windowed fullscreen as far as I noticed: the results are always the same. In both cases I can only select 5120x2880 and it runs slowly, even with the low-res option checked.

I usually have the lid closed but I also tried mirroring but that actually mirrors my external display to the laptop display instead of the other way round. It’s a 13" 2018 MB Pro by the way. Also changing desktop display modes has no effect when running the game full screen: it will always run 5K.

Running windowed I have these two issues:

  • the title bar of the window is always light and does not respect dark mode, which really stands out
  • the cursor is locked to the game window, but when I cmd+tab out of the game and go back it never locks anymore, how do I make the cursor locked to the window again?