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")

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

Since yesterday, my command line in the Epic Games Client no longer works. I have always set the following parameters: -force-metal -screen-fullscreen 1 -screen-width 3456 -screen-height 1944
In full screen, everything had fit on my 16" MacBook. Yesterday came an update from Magic Arena and the Epic Client. No matter which values I enter now, the aspect ratio no longer fits in the full screen. The numbers entered in the script have no effect anymore. I can only play the game in window mode. Does anyone have the same problem and a solution?

Yes, I noticed this as well and posted a bug here: In-game screen resolution changed to 16:10 on macOS after Tarkir Alchemy update (v2025.48)

Interestingly, the game’s landing and menu screens appear to load in the correct resolution (as set by this script or the Epic Games Launcher), but it automatically changes as soon as I enter a game for the first time.

In my case, if I switch the MTGA client to windowed mode, then everything renders at the correct aspect ratio, plus the in-game “Graphics” options screen works as expected (i.e. it automatically shows and selects the highest possible resolution, hence I don’t have to set this via a script or the Epic Games Launcher).

So in short, running the game in windowed mode seems to be the best workaround for now.

Yes, I noticed this as well and posted a bug here: In-game screen resolution changed to 16:10 on macOS after Tarkir Alchemy update (v2025.48)

Interestingly, the game’s landing and menu screens appear to load in the correct resolution (as set by this script or the Epic Games Launcher), but it automatically changes as soon as I enter a game for the first time.

In my case, if I switch the MTGA client to windowed mode, then everything renders at the correct aspect ratio, plus the in-game “Graphics” options screen works as expected (i.e. it automatically shows and selects the highest possible resolution, hence I don’t have to set this via a script or the Epic Games Launcher).

So in short, running the game in windowed mode seems to be the best workaround for now.

Oh no :-( That's bad. In window mode my macbook can not start the game mode. And my untapped.gg overlay does not work fine. I hope wizards will fix it quick. But I think we have to wait a long time. This bug always exists and wizards can not fix it since years.

FYI @BlackMambaHQ, this workaround/script is working again as of yesterday's v2025.48.40 update.

Thanks for the info! That's great news. I hope that the problem will be completely solved at some point. But the solution with the script helps a lot. Unfortunately, you can't open the graphics settings, otherwise everything is set incorrectly again. And you have to restart the game.

This script needs a nice shebang line. I added #!/bin/sh to the top because it was bugging me.

There seems to be a lot of confusion in the comments. Firstly, not everyone seems to know how to run a script.

1. Download the script. Right click on the Raw button and choose Save Link As.... (The rest of the instructions assume that you download it to ~/Downloads/arena-macos-full-screen-fixes.sh, but it can be downloaded to anywhere you want, as long as you update the path accordingly.)
2. Make the script executable:

chmod +x ~/Downloads/arena-macos-full-screen-fixes.sh

3. Run the script:

~/Downloads/arena-macos-full-screen-fixes.sh

The other thing that seems to be confusing people is the launch arguments. I've tried both solutions and have found that the launch arguments solution only works if you launch Arena from the Epic Games Launcher. Unless that's how you launch the games anyway, just use the script. Another thing I found is that -force-metal 1 breaks the game. The clicks don't get through until the third attempt. I'm not sure if that's just an issue on Apple Silicon, since no ones else is complaining about this. It works fine without it though:

-screen-width 1920 -screen-height 1080 -screen-fullscreen 1

Finally, some people don't seem to understand that opening the graphics options wipes these settings and sets them back to incorrect values. So just run the script and don't open the graphics options ever again. If you do, just run the script again.