• Abstract

  • Mac OSX Font Smooth on 12.6 Montery - visual indicator?

I've made many posts here before. I have both a 2017 iMac Pro and a 2019 15" MBP, both of which are causing me severe eye strain. At one point in the past I had the same issue with the iMac Pro and was able to eliminate it entirely but don't remember how. I'm fairly certain it has to do with the crispness of the fonts/display.

I've been trying to turn the font smoothing on and off using the Terminal commands to see if that would help me at all. I've been using this command: defaults -currentHost write -g AppleFontSmoothing -int 0. as well as it's variants to turn the level of font smoothing down or up. I'm not visual seeing any difference when I run these commands and then reboot the computer.

Does anybody know enough about Mac Smoothing to confirm for me whether I SHOULD BE able to visually see some difference when I run these commands (i.e. like the font getting slightly less crisp or sharp)? Because if that's the case, I can turn my attention to why that function is not activating and deactivating.

On the other hand, if you're not supposed to see any difference, then I'll know that's not it. Just before the eye strain issue returned, I remember I went into the Display Options to see what they were, held down the option key and clicked the display settings. At the exact moment, the fonts got a great deal sharper and the colors got a great deal more saturated and vibrant. I think the key for me to eliminate the eye strain is to enable or display font smoothing, but I suspect these terminal commands aren't working. I also tried an app called FONT SMOOTHING ADJUST which is supposed to do the same thing as the terminal command, but allow you to execute it with a toggle in the app rather than having to type out terminal commands. That toggle in that app also seems to visually do nothing.

So, does anybody know if I'm supposed to be able to visually see the font sharpness change when I enable and disable font smoothing? Thanks.

    brvideo Does anybody know enough about Mac Smoothing to confirm for me whether I SHOULD BE able to visually see some difference when I run these commands (i.e. like the font getting slightly less crisp or sharp)? Because if that's the case, I can turn my attention to why that function is not activating and deactivating.

    Don't know about MacOS, but generally you can see differences in font rendering settings by taking even just a screenshot and zooming in an image editor. Look at the pixels themselves.

      5 months later

      I did a screenshot on Monterey 12.6.5 (21G531) with and AppleFontSmoothing=0 and also with default setting (value deleted) did reboots between changes and then zoom into both screenshots but could not really see a remarkable difference that could no just explained by the maybe just different positions of the text scrolling in browser related to pixel grid when rendering was done.

      Not zoomed with OS default value the font looked a bit thicker and with AppleFontSmoothing=0 the font looked a bit thinner.

      Zoomed(left default value, right value 0 (disabled)):

      Not zoomed(left default value, right value 0 (disabled)):

      So there seems to be a small effect, but barely noticeable without the screenshots.

      It is up for the individual to say what is better/worser for eye strain here.

      I actually miss a option the see the crisp pixels in the font like in the old days (like my new ASUS monitor has this VividPixel option).

      Both are greyscale AA, but there are 2 possible differences.. the one on the right has stem darkening turned off which has made it less contrasty and more the shape of the letter/less bold. The left one looks like a bolder face because it actually is. The other difference is that it might, but probably not, be using a different hinting method. There are multiple methods of hinting.. Apple used to use none for many years, probably still doesn't, and unlikely that they do now because the higher the resolution of the screen, the less and less you need hinting. Using the font IBM Plex as an example, the TTF versions are hinted, but the OTF ones are not. I don't have a 4K display, so I am using the TTF versions on an OS that accepts hinting (Windows, Linux) and they do look better on my standard resolution display.. but if I had a 4K display I would be using the OTF ones instead. Many things to take into consideration.

      If you use dark mode in the browser, the one on the left is better for sure. For light mode, it depends on what your eyes like.. some people might like lower contrast text.

      Update: Originally said it was gamma, but it's not, it's stem darkening.. the font on the left is literally slightly bolder because of it.

      Apparently you can get a similar effect in Linux by adding " FREETYPE_PROPERTIES=“cff:no-stem-darkening=0 autofitter:no-stem-darkening=0” " to /etc/environment. I'll have to try that.

      dev