Ask HN: Subpixel font rendering disabled on macOS Catalina? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Subpixel font rendering disabled on macOS Catalina?

2 pointsryeights2 comments

Is anyone else experiencing this? Fonts look markedly worse on my external monitor after upgrading to Catalina. For example, here is a screenshot from Finder showing a clear lack of subpixel (RGB) anti-aliasing:

https://imgur.com/Hq5Txm0.png

Subpixel rendering is still 'enabled' in the defaults system:

  ~ % defaults read -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled
  0

View on HN

Same behavior here with CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled set to 0 as well. Tried the old AppleFontSmoothing defaults hacks too, but those just make things look worse.

Perhaps there is some new defaults string in Catalina that can be set? It seems like CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled set to 0 still has some effect on Catalina, but it's not subjectively the same result as was the case on Mojave.

Honestly things look subjectively better with CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled set to the default value of 1 on Catalina. Others seem to agree:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/the-subpixel-aa-debacle...

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