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User profile for user: c.morais
c.morais Author
User level: Level 1
14 points

Fonts blurry on external monitor

MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018), it has good Graphics Radeon Pro 560X 4 GB

Connection cable: a good MOSHI USB-C to DisplayPort Cable, Supports up to 5K/60Hz resolution

External monitor: tested several non retina external monitors, all set to DisplayPort 1.4, tested 4k monitors and QHD (2560x1440x60Hz), results are same to all external monitors: blurry fonts, crap text displayed on external monitor

macOS Big Sur version 11.6 (20G165)


Issue: macOS Big Sur displays blurry fonts on external monitor


Tried on terminal:

  • defaults -currentHost write -g AppleFontSmoothing -int 0
  • sudo defaults -currentHost write -g AppleFontSmoothing -int 0
  • reboot

After reboot the MacBookPro it is the same blurry fonts. It seems the change on the variable (AppleFontSmoothing ) is not persistent, which is confirmed by typing on terminal: echo $AppleFontSmoothing (it should return the stored value zero but returns null, meaning no permanent change was stored on the variable).


Tried also:

  • defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 3
  • reboot


Googled "big sur blurry font external monitor" and it seems everyone having same issue


Any solution?




Posted on Sep 27, 2021 10:10 AM

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User profile for user: c.morais
c.morais Author
User level: Level 1
14 points

Posted on Sep 27, 2021 10:43 AM

got an improvement by:

  1. making change to AppleFontSmoothing=0 be persistent (after all editing ˜/.bash_profile and adding text "export AppleFontSmoothing=0" worked fine, meaning change became persistent)
  2. removing tick on box "High Dynamic Range" of System Preferences -> Displays


These 2 changes made text fonts much better on the external monitor. it does not have the high quality of the same fonts displayed on the retina display of the MacBook Pro but now is acceptable.

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User profile for user: c.morais
c.morais Author
User level: Level 1
14 points

Sep 27, 2021 10:43 AM in response to c.morais

got an improvement by:

  1. making change to AppleFontSmoothing=0 be persistent (after all editing ˜/.bash_profile and adding text "export AppleFontSmoothing=0" worked fine, meaning change became persistent)
  2. removing tick on box "High Dynamic Range" of System Preferences -> Displays


These 2 changes made text fonts much better on the external monitor. it does not have the high quality of the same fonts displayed on the retina display of the MacBook Pro but now is acceptable.

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Fonts blurry on external monitor

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