Fixes Magic Arena's broken full screen implementation on macOS

arena-macos-full-screen-fixes.sh

# this forces Arena into full screen mode on startup, set back to 3 to reset
# note that if you go into the Arena "Graphics" preference panel, it will reset all of these
# and you will need to run these commands again
defaults write com.wizards.mtga "Screenmanager Fullscreen mode" -integer 0
defaults write com.wizards.mtga "Screenmanager Resolution Use Native" -integer 0

# you can also replace the long complicated integer bit with any other scaled 16:9
# resolution your system supports.
# to find the scaled resolutions, go to System Preferences --> Display and then
# divide the width by 16 and multiple by 9. on my personal system this ends up
# as 3456 x 1944 (versus the bizarre 1728x1117 it will very temporarily select
# when clicking the full screen option in the client
defaults write com.wizards.mtga "Screenmanager Resolution Width" -integer \
  $(system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType | grep Resolution | cut -c23-26)
defaults write com.wizards.mtga "Screenmanager Resolution Height" -integer \
  $(bc <<< "$(system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType | grep Resolution | cut -c23-26) / 16 * 9")

FYI, it appears WOTC has finally implemented a fix for this in the v2024.40.30 update (released on 12 Sep 2024). When you open the graphics options in the MTGA macOS app now, your maximum supported resolution will be displayed / supported in fullscreen mode.

Note however that the resolutions are calculated slightly differently to this script. In the case of my MacBook Pro M1, which has a built-in display that supports 3456 x 2234:

• This script sets my resolution to 3456 x 1944, which is a 16:9 aspect ratio, and therefore means the image fills the screen horizontally, but has a bit of black letterboxing at the top and bottom;
• Whereas the MTGA app now natively displays my maximum resolution, which is a 16:10 aspect ratio, and therefore means the image fills the screen horizontally and vertically, however this does cause some slight cropping of the in-game UI (i.e. things on the very left/right edges of the image appear partly off-screen, such as the companions and stack).

If you change the last line of this script from 16 * 9 to 16 * 10, then the native behaviour is identical (although I personally prefer the former).

Alas, this bug has been reintroduced in the Duskmourn Alchemy (v2024.42.0) update.

Furthermore, regardless of what height and width values I specify in the script now, my MTGA resolution is always displayed in 16:10 ratio. Using the Epic Games Launcher is a valid workaround though, as that correctly renders the app in 16:9 in my case.

yeah, i have squares with my m1 13" and cant do anything about it -_-

Can confirm Duskmourn Alchemy Foundations update (worked on Duskmourn) broke the game on Mac Mini M2. None of the tricks above helped. Crashes when entering main menu.

Deleting the arguing here, especially since it's about the PC version and this gist is about macOS.

I recently found a way to get it to work well on my MBP 13-inch M1 with 2560x1600 native screen resolution. Running the game in native resolution causes some UI elements to be cut off as people have said. In order to get it to run in 16:9 so that you can see everything I added this to the options in Epic Games Launcher:

-force-metal -screen-width 2560 -screen-height 1440

However, as soon as you open the settings menu in game it will mess this up

The fact this is still an issue after so long is absolutely despicable