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Comment by winecamera | Hacker News Reader

I'd love to use macOS, but macOS's font rendering on low DPI monitors (2560x1440) looks awful compared to Windows's font rendering. It's to the point that it's unusable for coding, so I just use Windows with WSL.

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My 30-inch 2560x1440 external monitor looked fuzzy/blurry on MacOS until I forced HiDPI. (Mac mini)

MacOS only offers HiDPI for certain resolutions. There is a free OSS program that unlocks HiDPI for other resolutions: https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDisplay

I just tried disabling HiDPI at 2560x1440, and it looks quite bad! With HiDPI, I'd say it looks similar (if not better) than Windows.

I'll have to give this a shot. Does it reduce your overall desktop working area?

The layout/pixel density remains exactly the same (you can also get better scaled resolutions, if desired). (Most) things just look less fuzzy.

It's hard to find good before/after shots. The difference is much more dramatic in real life:

- https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/10oy6xo/i_use_switchre...

- https://youtu.be/eyckJiws_30

BetterDisplay is $15 or so and it changes the equation from ’horrible’ to ‘good enough’. Still not as good as other OSes but at least you don’t have to buy an expensive monitor.

Why Apple decided to not support low dpi is beyond me.

Every time someone complains about some rough edge or papercut on MacOS, someone always chimes in woth "there's this app that fixes it for $10".

I find it astounding that this has somehow been normalized.

I don’t get to choose the platform my employer wants me to develop on, macOS it is. My wfh setup is on me; $15 is much cheaper than a $1000 5k display.

Apple doesn’t care as long as they move inventory, apparently.

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