High Sierra Font Smoothing

I updated to 10.13.4 yesterday and the problem with wrong font smoothing seems to have been fixed with this release!

However I still experience issues with wrong language on pre-boot after updates if a firmware password has been set. If the password was disabled prior to applying updates (also minor updates like the additional one for 10.13.3 2 months ago) the language is set correctly if FileVault is enabled. (if someone else experienced issues with this in the past)

Summary for 10.13.4:

• Font smoothing error is fixed for me so far
• In case someone has problems with wrong language on login screen with FileVault enabled APFS volumes: disable firmware password protection prior to updates, then the language appears to be set correctly, I haven't found any workaround so far if no update can be done – with firmware password enabled it appears to always switch the login screen language to english. (In case anyone is wondering why to use firmware passwords – try resetting your NVRAM and then check if findmymac is still active, enable firmware passwords and try resetting NVRAM: it won't work and NVRAM reset simply disables findmymac which renders the feature pretty much completely useless, just a minor hint Apple doesn't seem to care telling customers about)

Hello everyone,

I confirm that 10.13.2 is not solving this unexpected font smoothing with Finder's window in list or column view.

I also noticed that random smoothing font events occurred in third party application too. In this case, I didn't find a pattern as it exists for the Finder. I attached a screenshot from Tweetbot: Tweet with umlaut or accented characters are fine, font smoothing affects a message with "basic" letters (although I suspect it's the apostrophe fault).

I just remind you that Apple is not reading these discussions. Please do not forget to fill a bug report for this problem at bugreport.apple.com. (even Apple closes reports fast, a large number of reports about it may help to solve it in upcoming updates)

Regards.

Hi guys,

Apple finally answered to my bug report concerning this font smoothing problem.

If you're developper you can download the last beta and appreciate improvement.

For others, keep believing!! They are working on this bug.

Regards.

I have this issue too. And two friends have the same very anoing issue ... 😟

Finder enables smoothing, when either there is a special character in the name of the file / folder or when the name is too long. So in one finder view I have some lines where smoothing is enabled, and others with disabled smoothing.

See screenshot below!

I'll just bump this a bit, adding that I already tried quite a lot to get this bug fixed. It seems that nothing helps. Though for me only stock macOS apps seem to be affected, most annoyingly in Finder. Some lines in list view are just bold and others not. Also I saw that on my sidebar (set to small fonts) the name of my MacBook will only be bold if the sidebar isn't wide enough to show the full name. Setting it to wide enough will make the boldness disappear, reverting to a tighter sidebar results in the font instantly becoming bold again. Changing width in any other affected app won't change anything.

Trying to fix I already tried enabling/disabling LCD font smoothing multiple times including switching with reboots and nvram/pram and smc resets in between rebooting. All to no avail. I'd also like to add, that I never had any problem like this in previous versions of Mac OS X/macOS (reaching back to 10.8).

Exactly! Font Smoothing bug is finally fixed with 10.13.4.!

The wrong language bug your a speaking from is still occuring with my version, too.

Thanks for the workaround tipp, will try that for future updates!

Edit: Got the problem even with no file fault protection enabled...

macOS 10.13.3 (Build 17D47): the issue still has not been resolved for me. However, I recognized that one single folder does not seem to be affected. For the "public" folder, in german it is shown with a special character "ö" and is appearing as intended with disabled font smoothing. So, maybe a workaround would be, if we could apply the same for custom folders, to have them named differently than shown (after all, looking up default user folders in Terminal shows them in english, not like Finder's UI in local languages!). However, I don't know if that is either comfortable, or possible at all.

Actually, for me it seems to have become even worse, texts which have not been "smoothed" before now appear smoothed, even in other apps than integrated ones, 1Password for example now applies text smoothing to truncated or special character texts as well, which it definitely didn't do before. Also, in system settings, there are some sentences smoothed now, which have not been before, while others, that also have special letters, still are not (like before).

I really wonder where this bug is going, I could even imagine Apple to be trying to force us to use this "feature" now, whatever the reason may be – but they often did in the past with features no one really wants to have after all. (Like the stupid idea to just be able to disconnect from wi-fi/bluetooth via control center on iOS instead of disabling the networking device, like it was prior to iOS 11 – who even asked for that or likes the idea!? Whats the purpose in that? This kind of makes control center useless like back when it wasn't there at all! (iOS 5, or was it even 4?))

Got the same problem. Even a complete re-install of MacOS did not solve it. Seems to be a bug in the new metal api...

Adding up to confirm unfixed in 10.13.1; thanks for the truncated hint, just realised it also happens for lines which have special characters like ö, ä, ü in it. If I exchange those letters the text becomes unsmoothed.

For me even the text for file-sizes gets smoothed if truncated, thin (as expected) if not truncated.

Just updated to 10.13.2, still not fixed, as well as any other bug I have, they all seem to stay unfixed, sadly I don't know how to create an image of an APFS volume to downgrade to Sierra, slowly I really deeply regret ever upgrading to High Sierra. Thank you Apple for your great updates.

And give access to data not everyone wants or should want to hand over willingly. On a privacy side, beta programs appear to possible be quite a two edged sword. Just keep that in mind before running for beta software from anyone

Aaaanyway, back to topic. Is it possible this bug comes from a graphics driver bug rather than a bug in metal or something else?

After all i found multiple reports of issues with Intel graphics in High Sierra (especially when it comes to games), so I was wondering if the error also exists on Macs running dedicated graphics ONLY (like in energy settings for laptop computers setting to always use discrete graphics)? Anyone capable of testing that?

Is there any final ETA on 10.13.4 yet? (For above mentioned reason, and some other, I clearly prefer using release OS over beta; I am kind of tired of (public) beta testing, especially when it comes to what Apple calls "beta")

Same problem in macOS 10.13 (17A405).