Fixes Magic Arena's broken full screen implementation on macOS

arena-macos-full-screen-fixes.sh

#!/bin/bash

# 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")

I've just updated the client to the latest version. I'm playing in windowed mode on a MacBook Pro M1 16", and it still works fine with my launch option string. That might help if full screen got messed up — you won't get full screen coverage, but it's better than cropped edges.

With the window this size, the game is very playable:

This is the string I use:

-screen-fullscreen 0 -force-metal -force-low-power-device -screen-height 1662 -screen-width 2992

@iliaslonski the issue is full screen.. Windowed mode I get 16:9 aspect, just not in full screen..

Hey all,

So for me, on my MacBook Air M1 (2020), with a native resolution of 2560x1600, I was able to get full screen to work with the new client version 2025.52.10 (the Omenpaths update) with just this command (my native screen width and the height converted with 1600/10*9):

-screen-width 2560 -screen-height 1440

The game opens in full screen with thin black borders on the top on bottom of the screen, but now being in the right resolution the cards and hand are fully viewable.

The only solution that worked on my 14-inch MacBook Pro was to add the following command-line arguments to the Steam launcher:

-screen-width 3024 -screen-height 1701 -screen-fullscreen 0

After launching the game, press Cmd+F to toggle full-screen mode while preserving the correct aspect ratio (using -screen-fullscreen 1 or the green MacOS window button caused the aspect ratio to break for me).

For other display resolutions, you can calculate the appropriate screen-width and screen-height arguments using the formula provided in the original Gist:

# screen-width
echo "$(system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType | grep Resolution | cut -c23-26)"

# screen-height (maintains a 16:9 aspect ratio)
echo "$(bc <<< "$(system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType | grep Resolution | cut -c23-26) / 16 * 9")"