Q: blurry font on yosemite

Sorry I didn't notice your question until now.

I changed the system fonts to Lucida Grande with the Schreiberstein Solution:

      https://github.com/schreiberstein/lucidagrandeyosemite

I stopped using Safari, which appears to be hardwired, switched to FireFox and installed therein:

     No Squint;

     Theme Font Size Changer; and

     Roomy Bookmarks Toolbar

I increased the minimum display fonts in Apple Mail from within the program

I used TinkerTool to try to universally change the minimum fonts and sizes within all other programs which allow default font and size changes, keeping in mind that TinkerTool does not override any program's prohibitions but just gives you a way to change all the rest in one step instead of app by app

I turned on Dark Menus to create more contrast between active and inactive commands in the dropdown menus.

Regards, Nate

PS I went to System Prefs/General and changed Appearance to Graphite, SideBar Icon Size to Large (because it enlarges the sidebar fonts too-don't care about the icons); Default Web Browser to FireFox; and unchecked LCD Font Smoothing;

I went to SysPref/Accessibility/Display and checked Increase Contrast and Enlarge Cursor Size;

I kept SysPref/Display/Resolution as Best for Display not scaled; and Brightness to Automatically Adjust

and probably a few other things I probably don't remember right now.

All of the experimenting and turning things on and off was **** but I hope this helps others.

PS - Adding XtraFinder also has many virtues - fixing or working around other things Yosemite broke in Finder. Check the XtraFinder Preferences and you will see what I mean.

Reduce transparency as instructed in the earlier comment worked pretty well for my late 2009 iMac; this was the first of the wide looking iMacs(not square with the black back).

~TLDR~ but you might think it's funny: I recently got an iPad Air 2 and an iPhone 6 Plus and spend all day playing with them. I thought that because I was staring at those retina screens so much, that my iMac started to look blurry in comparison!

Today Apple answered on my "blurry UI elements" bug report - they closed it as duplicate of another report (which unfortunately seems to be still open). Good news is they have noticed the problem.

I have noticed a pattern with the blurry font in Yosemite. When I get up at around 5:30 a.m. to do work, the font is clear and crisp. By around 11:00 a.m. or so, the font starts to get very blurry. At that point, if I restart, it doesn't seem to help fix the blurry font much and I have to put up with it which strains my eyes. Then at some point late afternoon, it gets clearer and bolder again, then blurry again in the evening. It's quite randomly and but blurry font duration is long though.

I know that this means it's a Yosemite bug. I thought this was definitely a font rendering issue on non-retina displays, but the thing is that some people with retina displays have this problem too. I still don't know if Apple is going to fix this soon since they remain oh so quiet on this. I do know that some bug fixes never get fixed by Apple and I'm getting very concerned. I have sent so many Feedback reports to Apple so I don't know what else I can do.

It's almost an embarrassment on Apple's part that my mid 2012 MacBook Pro's font display looks so crappy compared to how crisp and beautiful the font was and on a continuous basis on Mavericks and also on Mountain Lion.

You have described it very, very well and I am so glad you are sending feedback reports to Apple.

I just wish everyone who experiences this would do so.

I am worried that many stop with expressing themselves only on forums like this one, and that Apple never sees/reads those.

Best wishes, Nate

No help here but I wanted to voice my concern that I have the same problem. I have tried some of the preference settings in System Preferences but they make little to no difference. Some people say "What are you talking about? Looks fine?" but to a discerning eye it is very noticeable and a great disappointment. Apparently not an issue on retina display models.

Please Apple, fix this problem.  For years the aliasing of type in OS X was beautiful.

Now it is terrible.  I started using OS X in the beta version.  Why with all your billions of dollars in the bank, you subject your valued customers to this bug, regression in software value?

Why can't you pay someone to monitor these forums and bring the real issues like this to those in charge?

It's rediculous.

I've just sent this to http://www.apple.com/feedback/

(If you have a problem, don't forget this step so Apple actually hears about your issue.)

Dear Apple,

I've never done this before but I downgraded after finding the Yosemite OS frustratingly difficult. The first thing I noticed was when “flat" window borders were invisible against the background colour of a webpage I opened.

I'm getting past 45 and my vision isn't great but suddenly, with this upgrade, I strained to see basic design elements. Without contrast and colour, it is hard to find buttons, hard to tell icons apart, and very hard to read text. I don’t have a problem with one aesthetic over another, but I couldn’t use the computer.

It's a new feeling to wonder if I won't be capable of using future Apple products. I hadn't really thought about that before. I hope something can be done to make the next version easier for those who have real problems with this one.

B

I really do hope some of these things can be addressed. I feel like somebody's design opinion is making my computer actually unusable. If I cannot read the text, the computer is broken, or I am, but I think it's easier to fix the computer.

I can't believe that they have left this issue unresolved for so long. I have a late 2009 27" iMac that this happens to every day. With OS X Mavericks I restarted the iMac maybe once every 2 weeks. These 5 year old computers take awhile to boot up! I love Yosemite otherwise.

I just bought a macbook pro 15" retina, running on yosemite, and it is nice for most programs, but some are still blurry. Did Apple resolved it??

I am having this problem on a new MBP 13" which came with Yosemite.  I already have trouble with the text / reading the font.  Unclicking smoothing LCD when possible helped (even on my retina, imho)  but also made the text less bold and less readable.  I have tried restarts and a re-install.  I keep getting blurriness with OS text, not sure why.  It does seem to fluctuate though.  strange.

After all this time has elapsed, I am getting pessimistic as to whether Apple even knows or cares about all of our sufferings with Yosemite. They are not even acknowledging our complaints. Maybe they have become content to serve only those who "love" Yosemite, those who claim they have no problems, and those who ridicule all of us who do, because those Apple users seem to have no compassion whatsoever for us and ridicule us for having problems.

Very sad.

Criticism of the Yosemite UI, in particular of the UI font, has been sufficiently widespread that I would hope that someone is paying attention. The sporadic blurring is really hard to fathom.

However, now that I have installed cDock to make the dock less disturbing, and am using Fira Sans as my system font, I am finding Yosemite more palatable. I have also set up one test system with Lucida Grande as the system font. The difference was actually rather shocking: Lucida Grande is so much more legible and so much  "cleaner" than Helvetica Neue.

This article, in which Jens Kutílek is interviewed, covers some of the problems pretty well: http://www.howdesign.com/web-design-resources-technology/****-helvetica-yosemite -backlash/

Neue Helvetica is just a bad choice for user interfaces. Its spacing is very tight, which gives words a very “designed” look, but it’s bad for word and letter recognition. Its letter forms are closed, for example the lower right terminal of the “e.” It goes all the way up until the end reaches the horizontal, closing up the interior form. The outer shape gets therefore quite similar to “c” and “o” at least on normal resolution screens.

On Retina displays the higher resolution helps, maybe that’s why on the iPhone, Helvetica doesn’t bother me that much. Requirements of UI fonts are similar to those of signage typefaces. In that field, Adrian Frutiger set the standards in the 1970s when he developed a signage alphabet for the French airport Roissy. Some people expected that he would use his Univers family, but he knew that its closed, static forms would make a bad signage typeface. The Roissy typeface later evolved into the Frutiger typeface family. It’s still one of the most widely used signage typefaces. Microsoft uses a very similar font for their Windows systems, Segoe UI. The open letter forms and generous spacing maintain the characteristic shapes of the letters even when viewed under bad conditions (low light, low resolutions) and from far away. Another point are the numbers, which are also quite important in user interfaces. The Helvetica numbers are very hard to recognize at a glance, also due to the closed forms.

Kutílek is a Font Engineer at Monotype in Berlin.

When you use H. Neue for print, you have to be careful with spacing at smaller sizes, and print tends to be clearer than what you see on screen, unless you are printing on cheap toilet paper.

Yosemite 10.10.3 is out, but the blurred font problem is still there...

I guess this is apple "solution" to the blurred fonts problem; we are on the same level as "if you car engine makes a strange noise, just turn it off; problem solved". No comments. 

I'm getting very frustrated, my iMac is seven years old and I was planning an upgrade for this summer/autumn, but I'm seriously considering other options than buying another apple mac. If Yosemite is the best apple can offer to its users, it's a subtle way to get rid of the mac line of business and concentrate only on mobile. Several colleagues of mine have macbooks as workstations and not a single one is happy with the Yosemite upgrade.

bye

Enrico