A method for controlling bit-width for bi-directional optical flow (BDOF) for video coding includes decoding a first reference picture and a second reference picture, the second reference picture being different than the first reference picture, wherein the first reference picture is displayed before a current picture and the second reference picture is displayed after the current picture. A motion refinement of a coding unit (CU) is calculated by minimizing a difference between a first prediction L0 and a second prediction L1. First gradient values for the first prediction L0 and second gradient values for the second prediction L1 are calculated. A final bi-prediction of the CU is calculated. Also disclosed are an associated apparatus and an associated non-transitory computer readable storage medium.