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blurry font on yosemite

so i've upgraded to yosemite.

overall i like it, simplified and more like iOS

however the first thing that hit me is how blurry all the text is everywhere!

it's pretty awful, i'm sure it wasn't that bad with mavericks

the menu bar at the top of the screen is worse of all, i really don't understand what is going on here.it's bad and i hope it will be addressed in an update

User uploaded file

i think you can see from this screen shot how the web text is fairly clear whilst the menu bar is blurry

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Oct 17, 2014 7:37 AM

Reply
206 replies

Dec 3, 2014 12:55 AM in response to devptdesigner

Hy

i've an imac 24" mi-2007 with yosemite, and you must use Terminal and put the AppleFontSmoothing parameter on 2 or 3 (default parameter is 1) with this line commande : "the defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 3". In my mac, the good parameter is 3. You must restart, and after you must don't check "Use LCD font smoothing when available" otherwise you lost your personnal parameter.

it's good for me

Dec 13, 2014 6:12 AM in response to Oliver Matuschin

My problem also has gone after rebooting after setting the LCD font smoothing disabled. In my case, the issue was with the font for the menu items. When I disabled the LCD font smoothing in Preferences, it seemed the problem was not fixed. However, after rebooting my mac, my problem was perfectly fixed.


I also recommend reading this article. http://osxdaily.com/2014/10/27/change-font-smoothing-text-os-x-yosemite/

Dec 17, 2014 4:12 AM in response to jthurow

I wonder how many people are getting their eyesight checked and don't realize that it's Yosemite's GUI that is causing this. It doesn't help that Yosemite has insufficient contrast in the tittle bars, ultra white everywhere, and that Helvetica Neue ultra light font is system wide so this compounds the eye strain problem. Couple in that non-retinas are affected by font rendering issues. Apple even states on their website that Yosemite is for retina displays which in reality is only a small percentage of users.


iTunes 12 is a good example of this UI mishap. I'm blinded by white. The font is ultra light which makes it blurry on my non-retina display. I still can't get over how tiny the font in iTunes 12 is and I have "Large" checked in Preferences.


A quick search and you'll find many tech websites offering fixes to increase legibility in Yosemite and I've gone through all of them. I've spent way too much time on this. It's about time that Apple offers a fix.


For the moderators on this site.........yes, I have sent numerous feedback to Apple, but so far I'm ignored. The 10.10.2 build that is out in beta and there is no mention of the font being fixed. How much longer do we have to wait???


For anyone that reads this thread, do remember your experiences with Mavericks and that you had zero problems with eye strain then.

Dec 18, 2014 2:37 PM in response to Spirosg

Just to be clear, this is not a font issue. It's not only the font that gets blurry it's also the menubar icons. Adjusting LCD font smoothing won't fix the issue. Simply restarting will fix the issue MOMENTARILY, but the issue will return after some time. Browsing through Open Radar seems like it may be related to bug in CoreImage... this will only be fully resolved in a patch from Apple.


You can file bug reports at https://bugreport.apple.com/

Dec 20, 2014 5:48 AM in response to Cristofer Cruz

This is true. It does affect more than the font. Right now I'm looking at Safari, the menu bar and font is jagged, not clean crisp like Lucinda Grande system font was. A lot of the times, Apple Mail is particularly blurry in the font and menu bar. App Store is mostly unreadable with the tiny faded print. iTunes, the same.


I'm noticing things like in Messages when I'm responding to a message without opening the app and the font is particularly faded and jagged looking. Recently, there was a slight tick underneath one of the characters so I'm wiping the screen, but it's still there. This is absolute craziness.


Yes, restarting does fix it for a bit. Sometimes when I wake my MBP, the font appears clearer for a little while. The unfortunate thing is it does return so some who don't research this think they have eyesight problems or think their graphics card was dying out. Just great.......what a GUI mess. I had nothing like this with Mavericks. I'm so disappointed with Yosemite and the new features aren't even worth it because half the time I can't receive Airdrops to my MBP.


I tried to report this to the bug report link you provided a few times, but it doesn't accept my information. I've already done feedback to Apple many times. I'm frustrated and I so regret upgrading to Yosemite. Never again will I upgrade to a new OS X.

blurry font on yosemite

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