Most of you already know that even if you have the perfect setup (hardware / operating system etc), web browsers and websites may sometimes still make your eye strain persist. In my case, the biggest issue for my eyes is due to font rendering, which some web browsers insist on doing their own thing.

A workaround for me is once I got a good setup (currently in Ubuntu on a Thinkpad E15 G2, using Tweaks to increase Hinting, change the interface font etc), I installed the Dark Reader browser add-on, in the More tab enable the font and chose (or type) "system-ui". Visually, this looks as if along with changing the font on the websites, it also changes how it's rendered.

This works on both Firefox and Chrome (although it looks better in Firefox) and has improved readability of websites for me, especially those with weird/non-standard fonts. My eyes also find comfort using the dark mode of this extension, but even the Light Mode on Dynamic setting is a lot more relaxing to my eyes than the usual white background. Another option you can tweak on this extension is the Text Stroke, for those who get eye strain with fonts that are too thin.

Obviously, this may not work for everyone, and I haven't tested this on Windows yet, but it would be interesting to know if others find the same relief. You can also change the gfx.font_rendering.ahem_antialias_none (or similar) value in about:config in Firefox to see if that helps you in any way.

Have you found any other workarounds for web browsers that works for you?

2 months later

Thanks - been using DarkReader for ages now and never knew about this. Suddenly the font seems to have no 'jagged edges' like before. Thank you. Using it in Chrome.

Dark Reader is irreplaceable for me. I do disable font antialiasing on my Mac, but overall I do not have a preference for chosen font.

All black backgrounds also bother me or sometimes even in dark mode some fonts feel too bright. My fix in Dark Reader is to also override the Background and Font color, picking grayish ones.

Another good extension is Dark New Tab or Momentum, so that blank new tabs are not white

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