The new Apple MacBook is a great device, providing incredible portability, alongside good performance for the majority of basic workloads (web browsing, productivity, web development, etc.)

Although I continue to use a MacBook Pro as my “work horse”, the MacBook is my device of choice when traveling (personally I still find the iPad to be too restrictive).

One challenge I have with the MacBook is the inability to scale the resolution above 1440x900 (considering the display is capable of 2304x1440). In my opinion, the sweet spot is actually 1680x1050, providing more real-estate, without negatively impacting usability.

You can obviously download third-party applications (e.g. QuickRes) to overwrite the resolution, however there is also a relatively simple system tweak that will provide a scaled 1680x1050 resolution natively (as highlighted in the image below).

MacBook Scaling

Enabling a scaled 1680x1050 resolution can be achieved by completing the following five steps:

Step One

Start by gathering information about your specific display. Navigate to “System Preferences > Displays > Color > Display profiles”.

Select “Color LCD” and click “Open Profile”.

Scroll to line 17 and note down the “Manufacturer” and “Model” values (examples below):

Manufacturer: 00000610  
Model: 0000A027


The key numbers are “610” and “A027” (you can ignore the zeros).

Step Two

Restart your MacBook, holding “CMD + R” to enter “Recovery Mode”. Open the Terminal from the Menu Bar and type:

csrutil disable


This will disable the System Integrity Checker, allowing you to update system files.

Step Three

Navigate to “/System/Library/Displays/Contents/Resources/Overrides” and choose the folder “DisplayVendorID-610”, where the “610” matches your “Manufacturer” value.

Inside the folder, find the file “DisplayProductID-a027”, where the “A027” matches your “Model” value.

Step Four

Prior to proceeding, make a backup of the “DisplayProductID-a027” file (copy to your desktop).

Open the original file using TextEdit and add the following line to the bottom of the “" section.

<data>AAANIAAACDQAAAAB</data>


Save the file and restart your MacBook.

Step Five

Navigate to “System Preferences > Displays”, where you will now be able to natively select the 1680x1050 resolution.

Finally, restart your MacBook and re-enable the System Integrity Checker by holding “CMD + R” to enter “Recovery Mode”. Open the Terminal from the Menu Bar and type:

csrutil enable


That’s it! You now have a scaled 1680x1050 resolution, without any third-party applications.

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