The 2021 MacBook Pro came with a greatly improved miniLED XDR display which is advertised as being able to handle 1000 nits sustained brightness.

Contrary to everyone’s expectations, when the machine got into the hands of users, it was clear that the display was still capped at the previous 500 nits for normal usage.

My attempt at trying to break through that limit failed, but the details might be useful for someone more determined.

When M1 Macs were launched, a new GPU with iOS-like architecture started driving the external monitors.

This meant that the old method for controlling monitors using DDC wouldn’t work anymore.

Apps like Lunar and MonitorControl had to find other ways to change the brightness of the monitors.