Any solution to blurry text in Mojave?

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Level 1

20 points

Any solution to blurry text in Mojave?

Hi,

As many have reported text is blurry in non-Retina displays starting with Mojave. I have an HP Z27 4k monitor, and have tried to see what happens if upgrading from High Sierra.

With the default suggested resolution of 1920 x 1080 ppi the monitor is in Retina mode (4 real pixel per virtual pixel), and the text is as crisp as ever.

If I use SwitchRexX to choose a more comfortable resolution of 2304 x 1296, the text becomes slightly blurry. Not as much as with my older native HD monitor, but not remotely as clear as High Sierra in the same resolution.

By zooming in the screen with Cmd-drag, I can clearly see that, while High Sierra has nice looking anti-aliased smooth characters, Mojave a rough, irregular corners, with just a hint of grey shade.

Is there any way to restore the old color anti-aliasing, like in High Sierra? Maybe a third-parti extension? The change in font smoothing suggested elsewhere does very little to make the text more legible and the headache less strong.

Paolo

Posted on Jun 19, 2020 1:21 PM

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Answer 1

PaoloT. Author

Level 1

20 points

Jun 23, 2020 5:19 PM in response to chris_g1

Hi,

Thank you for your answer. I was probably not very clear in explaining my issue. I'm trying Mojave on an old Mac (mini 2012 quad-i7). But the display is not old, having been introduced a couple years ago. It has enough pixel density to give a crisp and smooth image in High Sierra.

I've not turned font smoothing off, but on. What I had not tried, after checking that the font smoothing option in the System Preferences > General panel was turned on, was entering this command in the Terminal:

defaults write -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled -bool NO

After having entered the above, I logged out and then in. The font rendering was a lot better. In some programs, there was still a hint of color anti-aliasing, like in the older system!

Probably, the two font smoothing commands (System Panel, Terminal) do each one something different, and you need to turn both on on a 4k display.

Paolo

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Answer 2

chris_g1

Community Specialist

Jun 23, 2020 3:35 PM in response to PaoloT.

Hello PaoloT.,

Thanks for posting! As I understand it, you're running macOS Mojave and you're seeing blurry text when when using a non-Retina display. Is that correct?

To verify, you've tried turning font smoothing off, and you've tested an older monitor with less blurry text. Is that right?

Which exact Mac model are you using?

Is this happening with specific apps?

You might try booting your Mac into safe mode. This can be useful in isolating possible font issues: How to use safe mode on your Mac. Once you boot into safe mode, see how it looks and click Apple menu () > Restart to get back to normal.

Hopefully this is helpful. Take care.

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Any solution to blurry text in Mojave?

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