Disclosure up front: Purplelink, which publishes this site, makes one app mentioned here, Lenses, a free 7-day trial and then a $4.99 license key. It is step 8 and nothing before it needs it. I tested these settings on a RayNeo Air; I have not tried XREAL or VITURE glasses.
The short answer
Pick a HiDPI size in System Settings, Displays, turn on 120 Hz if it is offered, switch to Dark Mode and make the pointer bigger. Two things macOS cannot do for these glasses: an edge margin that hides the soft edges, and a night tint.
Step 1. Why the edges blur: it is the optics
Start here, because it saves you hours of changing settings that cannot help. AR glasses of this kind show a picture through a small lens. The middle is sharp and the edges are soft. That is a property of the lens, not of your eyes, and not of the Mac.
macOS cannot sharpen the rim. What you can do is stop putting detail there, which is step 4. Everything else below is about making the middle better.
Step 2. Get a sharp picture: use a HiDPI size
Open System Settings, choose Displays and click the glasses. The list of sizes shows a short set by default. Hold Option while you open the list and macOS shows more sizes.
Choose a size that macOS draws at 2x (a HiDPI size), such as 1920 by 1080 on a 1080p pair. The Mac draws the text at twice the size and scales it down, which looks smoother than a size drawn at 1x. If the text is too small, step down to a size such as 1600 by 900 rather than going back to 1x.
One optional extra: defaults -currentHost write -g AppleFontSmoothing -int 2 in Terminal makes text a little heavier. Log out and back in for it to apply. To undo it, run defaults -currentHost delete -g AppleFontSmoothing.
Step 3. Use 120 Hz if the glasses offer it
In System Settings, Displays, with the glasses selected, open the Refresh Rate menu. If it lists 120 Hz, pick it. Motion, scrolling and the pointer look smoother. If the menu only shows 60 Hz, the glasses or the cable are not offering more, and macOS cannot add it.
Some pairs only offer 120 Hz at certain sizes, so if it disappears after you change the size in step 2, that is why.
Step 4. Shrink the picture so the soft edges are black: macOS cannot do this
This is the one that helps most and the one macOS has no setting for. The idea is to draw the picture at 95%, 90% or 85% of the screen and leave a black border. On these glasses black pixels are off, so the soft rim of the lens shows nothing at all, and the part you look at is the sharp middle. The technical name is underscan.
System Settings does not offer underscan for these glasses, and I know of no setting that does it by hand. The nearest thing is to keep your windows away from the edge, which works for a window but not for the menu bar or the Dock.
Step 5. Turn on Dark Mode: black is see-through
On glasses like these, a black pixel is a pixel that is off, so black looks see-through and bright white fills your view with light. Dark Mode makes most of the screen dark, which is easier to look at and lets you see past it to the room.
Open System Settings, Appearance, and choose Dark. That is a setting for the whole Mac, so it also changes your laptop screen.
Step 6. Night Shift does not reach the glasses
Night Shift, in System Settings under Displays, warms the colors in the evening. It does not warm the glasses. There is no setting in macOS that gives an external display like this its own night tint.
So there is nothing to do by hand here, and I would rather say that than invent a workaround. A blue-heavy bright image right before sleep is worth avoiding, which is one more reason to use Dark Mode.
Step 7. Make the pointer bigger
The pointer is small at the size you see through the glasses. Open System Settings, Accessibility, Display, and drag Pointer size to the right. A larger pointer is easier to find across a wide virtual screen.
This is also a whole-Mac setting, so it applies on the laptop too.
Step 8. Or do all of this automatically
Steps 2, 3, 5 and 7 are settings you can change once and forget, but you have to change them back when you unplug, and the edge margin and the night tint cannot be done at all in System Settings.
Lenses is a menu-bar app I made for this, with a free 7-day trial and then a $4.99 license key. When the glasses connect it applies the profile you chose: a sharp HiDPI mode, 120 Hz where offered, an edge margin, a night tint, Dark Mode and a bigger pointer. When you unplug them it puts the Mac back. It collects nothing; the only network request it makes is the update check.
I tested it on RayNeo Air. It recognises XREAL and VITURE glasses by display name, which I have not tested, and any other glasses can be marked with Use this display as my glasses in its menu. It needs macOS 14 or later and an Apple silicon Mac, with a 14-day refund. Everything above works without it.
Frequently asked
Why are the edges of my AR glasses blurry?
The blur comes from the lens, not from your eyes or from macOS. These glasses are sharp in the middle of the view and soft toward the edges, so any picture that runs to the edge of the screen has a soft rim.
Does Night Shift work on AR glasses?
Not on the glasses. Night Shift does not reach them, and System Settings has no night tint for an external display like this. Lenses gives the glasses a matching warm tint whenever Night Shift is on.
Can macOS shrink the picture so the edges are black?
Not for these glasses. There is no edge margin setting in System Settings. This is the one step in the guide you cannot do by hand.
Does this work on XREAL and VITURE?
The by-hand steps are plain macOS settings and apply to any glasses that show up as a display. I tested Lenses on RayNeo Air only. It recognises XREAL and VITURE by display name, but that part is untested.
Is Lenses required?
No. Steps 1 to 7 work without it. Lenses applies them automatically when the glasses connect, and does the things macOS cannot: the edge margin, a night tint for the glasses and restoring everything on unplug.
Related guides
- Lenses: the Purplelink Mac menu-bar app that applies these settings when the glasses connect.
- How to snap and tile windows on a Mac: useful on a wide virtual screen.
- All products and all guides.