Hello,
I have a 14-inch MacBook Pro (2023, M2 Pro, Mac14,9) with the built-in 3024 × 1964 Liquid Retina XDR display. The issue occurs on both macOS 26 and macOS 27.
I noticed that several rows at the very bottom of the rendered image are not visible on the physical display, although they are present in full-screen screenshots.
To measure this, I created light and dark test images at the native 3024 × 1964 resolution. Each contains:
- a reference staircase 240 pixels above the bottom edge;
- an identical measurement staircase touching the final image row.
The steps are 1 to 30 pixels high. When displayed at 1:1 scale, the first visible bottom step should show how many rows are missing.
In the source images and screenshots, all steps are present. On the physical display, steps 1–7 are not visible, and step 8 is approximately the first visible one. The reference staircase displays correctly.
The result is the same with both light and dark backgrounds, so it does not appear to be only a mini-LED local-dimming effect. I also checked from different viewing angles and inspected the edge with a USB microscope. This does not appear to be parallax or a bezel physically covering the pixels.
It therefore looks as though the full 3024 × 1964 image is captured in screenshots, but the final seven rows are not shown during actual display output.
Has anyone seen this on a 14-inch MacBook Pro? Is this expected behavior, a macOS/display firmware issue, or a hardware defect in the display assembly?
I have attached the source images, screenshots, full-screen photos, and close-up photos for both tests.
Source image:
Screenshot:
Photo Full:
Photo close-up: