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BetterDisplay VS Essentials

Compare BetterDisplay VS Essentials and see what are their differences

BetterDisplay

Unlock your displays on your Mac!

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Essentials

Essential tools and mods for Android nerds. Contribute to sameerasw/essentials development by creating an account on GitHub.

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Deciphrfi
The intelligent crypto financial operation system. sponsored
Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Which is more popular?

Based on our record, BetterDisplay seems to be more popular. It has been mentioned 4 times since March 2021.

social mentions
4 vs 0
Productivity popularity
100% vs 0%
alternatives listed
28 vs 15

Base details

Website, pricing, platforms and company facts side by side.

BetterDisplay
Essentials
Website betterdisplay.pro github.com
Listed in
Crypto Twitter Web App Art +1
Utilities Windows Tools System Utility OS & Utilities +1

Features and specs

What each product offers, as listed by its team.

BetterDisplay 0 features
Essentials 5 features

No features have been listed yet.

  • Clean and Minimal Design
    Essentials provides a clean, minimal browser startpage/new tab experience that focuses on simplicity and aesthetics, reducing visual clutter compared to default browser homepages.
  • Customizable
    The project allows users to customize various aspects of their startpage, including links, bookmarks, and visual elements, making it adaptable to individual workflows and preferences.
  • Open Source
    Being hosted on GitHub and open source, users can freely inspect, modify, and contribute to the codebase, ensuring transparency and community-driven improvements.
  • Lightweight
    The project is built with simple web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript), making it fast to load and easy to deploy without heavy dependencies or frameworks.
  • Self-Hosted Friendly
    Users can easily host and run the startpage locally or on their own servers, maintaining full control over their data and not relying on third-party services.

Possible disadvantages

  • Limited Documentation
    The project has relatively limited documentation, which may make it harder for new users or contributors to understand setup, configuration options, and how to extend the project.
  • Niche Use Case
    As a browser startpage, it serves a very specific niche purpose and may not appeal to users who are satisfied with default browser new tab pages or more feature-rich alternatives like Notion or other dashboard tools.
  • Small Community
    The project has a relatively small user and contributor base, which can mean slower development, fewer feature additions, and limited community support for troubleshooting issues.
  • Manual Configuration
    Customization often requires directly editing code or configuration files rather than offering a user-friendly settings interface, which can be a barrier for less technical users.
  • Limited Feature Set
    Compared to more established startpage projects (like Homer, Heimdall, or Flame), Essentials may lack advanced features such as service health monitoring, integrations, or weather widgets that power users might expect.

Analysis

An editorial look at what each product does well and who it suits.

BetterDisplay
Essentials

Overall verdict

  • BetterDisplay is a highly regarded macOS utility that gives users powerful control over their displays, offering flexible resolution scaling, brightness management, and virtual screen creation that Apple doesn't provide natively. It's well-maintained, actively developed, and widely praised by the Mac community.

Why this product is good

  • Enables custom and HiDPI resolutions on external monitors that macOS normally restricts
  • Provides software brightness and dimming control for displays that lack native adjustment
  • Lets you create virtual displays useful for streaming, screen sharing, or headless Mac setups
  • Offers XDR/HDR brightness enhancements and fine-grained per-monitor settings
  • Has a generous free tier with an affordable one-time Pro upgrade rather than a subscription
  • Lightweight, actively maintained, and trusted with a strong reputation among Mac power users

Recommended for

  • Mac users with external monitors who want better resolution and scaling options
  • People who need software brightness control for monitors without hardware buttons
  • Developers and content creators needing virtual or headless displays
  • Power users who want granular control over their display setup
  • Anyone frustrated by macOS's limited native display management

Overall verdict

  • Essentials is a well-regarded, popular Minecraft server plugin (and its modern fork EssentialsX) that provides a comprehensive suite of core commands and features for server administration, making it a solid foundation for most Bukkit/Spigot/Paper servers.

Why this product is good

  • Offers hundreds of essential commands and features out of the box, covering teleportation, homes, warps, kits, and economy
  • Actively maintained through the EssentialsX fork with regular updates and compatibility for modern Minecraft versions
  • Open source and free, with a large community providing support, documentation, and tutorials
  • Highly configurable with granular permissions integration for fine-tuned server control
  • Widely adopted, so it integrates well with many other popular plugins

Recommended for

  • Minecraft server administrators setting up a new survival or multiplayer server
  • Server owners who need a reliable all-in-one plugin for basic management commands
  • Communities wanting economy, homes, and warp systems without installing many separate plugins
  • Beginners looking for well-documented, beginner-friendly server tooling
  • Developers building on Bukkit, Spigot, or Paper who want a stable core plugin foundation

Videos

Walkthroughs and reviews on video.

BetterDisplay 2 videos + Add
Essentials 0 videos + Add

BetterDisplay Mac Tutorial: Fix Display Resolution & Refresh Rate

More videos

  • - BetterDisplay Resolution Scaling Fix For Mac HiDPI mode

No Essentials videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Category popularity

How often each product is chosen within a category, 0–100% relative to the other.

Score bands 0–20 21–40 41–50 51–60 61–100
BetterDisplay
Essentials
100% 100%
Productivity
0% 0%
0% 0%
Utilities
100% 100%
100% 100%
Mac
0% 0%
0% 0%
System Utility
100% 100%

User comments

Share your experience with using BetterDisplay and Essentials. For example, how are they different and which one is better?

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Social recommendations and mentions

Recommendations tracked on public social media and blogs since March 2021.

BetterDisplay 4 mentions
Essentials 0 mentions
  • Ask HN: Is anyone working at least 4 hours daily on an Apple Vision Pro?
    > it's important to use Better display to upscale the output to the XReals to high DPI I got excited for a second but then read Better Display[0] is only available for MacOS? :( [0]: https://betterdisplay.pro/. - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • Resizing windows on macOS Tahoe – the saga continues
    For the first one (and all other screen-related bugs) you can use BetterDisplay to fix it: https://betterdisplay.pro/. - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • DeskPad – A virtual monitor for screen sharing
    Thanks for sharing this! My main issue with the windowed projectors is that you can't force them to have the proper size for the resolution of the OBS canvas which causes the result to be scaled and it has window borders. I've worked... - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago

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Tracking Essentials since Apr 2026.

Alternatives to BetterDisplay and Essentials

When comparing BetterDisplay and Essentials, you can also consider the following products.

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