Your MacBook Pro screen can go 70% brighter.
macOS just won’t let it.

Yes. MaxCandela uses the same HDR headroom macOS itself uses for HDR video, and never exceeds the limit the OS reports. On top of that it runs its own heat protection, because a sustained bright screen warms the panel in a way macOS doesn’t step in for on its own.

It does: brightness is power, and power is heat, so a boosted display runs warmer than usual. MaxCandela keeps track of how hard and how long it has been driving your panel and steadily lowers the boost as that adds up, settling at a level your Mac can hold rather than running flat out indefinitely. If things go further — a genuinely hot machine — it cuts the boost completely and hands the display back to macOS, then brings it back once you’ve cooled down. The menu tells you which of those is happening, and you can switch the boost off yourself at any time.

No. Turning MaxCandela off puts your display back exactly where it was — at your normal brightness, with nothing dimmed. MaxCandela never lowers your baseline; it only adds brightness on top while it’s on, then hands everything back untouched. If the screen looks a little dim for a second right after, that’s just your eyes adjusting from the brighter level — the display itself is unchanged. (The one exception is if macOS itself reports critical thermal pressure, when MaxCandela dims slightly below normal to help — and that restores itself too.)

You need a Mac with an HDR-capable display: a MacBook Pro 14″ or 16″ (2021 or later) with the Liquid Retina XDR display, or a Pro Display XDR — those go up to ~1,000 nits sustained instead of the usual ~600. MacBook Air, iMac, and ordinary external monitors have no HDR headroom to unlock, so MaxCandela can’t brighten them. The app tells you straight away if your display isn’t supported, and the browser demo above is an honest test — if it doesn’t brighten your screen, the app won’t either.

Brightness costs power — the boost uses more battery, just like HDR video playback does. Toggle it off when you don’t need it; one click.

Download free from the Mac App Store and get 5 days with everything unlocked. The clock starts when your Apple ID first downloads MaxCandela, so open it soon after installing to get the full five days. After that, keep it for $0.99/month or unlock it forever for $9.99. One purchase works on all Macs signed into your Apple ID.

Redeem it at apps.apple.com/redeem, or in the App Store app on your Mac → your name → “Redeem Gift Card or Code”, using the same Apple Account. That route works for every kind of code. The ☀️ menu also has “Purchases ▸ Redeem Code…”, but Apple’s in-app sheet only takes subscription offer codes — a one-off Lifetime code has to go through the App Store. A code unlocks MaxCandela straight away: it does not wait for your free trial to run out, and it replaces the trial rather than being added on to the end of it. If the menu still shows a trial afterwards, choose “Purchases ▸ Restore Purchases”.

macOS reserves the panel’s extra brightness for HDR content to protect battery and thermals by default. MaxCandela lets you choose when everyday content deserves the same headroom.