Possible to make OS X have Cleartype rendering?

Se7ven

Se7ven

Se7ven

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I know OS X has a different kind of text rendering from windows, but is there any possible way to have Cleartype the same as is used in Windows?

I absolutely hate the rendering of font when browsing, everything looks bold and when I use windows on VM it just feels a lot more clean, clear and better to read.

Possible? Thanks :)

example - windows being on the left;

e7b8ro.jpg
 
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That isn't right.

MP or MBP doesn't look anything like the right!!

In fact, the text on the left looks the same as your text in the post itself!

Whats your font smoothing setting at in appearance?
 
use lcd font smoothing when available and turn off text smoothing for font 4 and smaller

tried changing these settings doesnt make a difference
 
As far as I know all the browsers use OS X default rendering for type, but it might worth mentioning which browser people are using incase.

Safari 5, more like that the text on the right.
 
apparently snow leaopard (10.6>) change the font rendering to suit CRT's but LCD's get shafted.

but there was a terminal command i found to change the font strength from 3 (default) back to 2 or 1 which made it less 'bold', so it looks better now :)
 
Se7ven said:
apparently snow leaopard (10.6>) change the font rendering to suit CRT's but LCD's get shafted.

but there was a terminal command i found to change the font strength from 3 (default) back to 2 or 1 which made it less 'bold', so it looks better now :)
Click to expand...

Are you sure its not the other way around? Apple aren't the type of company to make text look better for CRT monitors over LCDs.
 
Sorry to resurrect an old thread but my brand new MacBook Pro has exactly the same problem as the OP in both Safari and Chrome, the OS fonts look fine.

Did anyone ever find a fix for this?

Cheers :)
 
I appear to have found the fix for this. In Snow Leopard, Apple removed the options for font smoothing in the Appearance pane in System Preferences leaving you with one option "Use LCD font smoothing when available" - previously you had the following options:

Automatic - Best for Main Display
Standard - Best for CRT
Light
Medium - Best for Flat Panel
Strong

The following command lets you change those hidden settings:

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 4

Lots of places said to change the value to "3" to fix this issue but only upon setting it to "4" did it work for me.

I wonder why Apple removed this option anyway!

Cheers,

Craig
 
Kona* said:
I wonder why Apple removed this option anyway!
Click to expand...
Someone made the call as to which one looked best? Seems likely.

I remember thinking these options (pre 10.6) didn't do anything noticeable until I found out you had to reboot or at least log out for it to take effect.
 
Right then, I've delved a little deeper in to this problem after noticing that this doesn't happen on my external monitor and it's not a problem on all 13" MBP's, some have suggested it's down to the panel that's in the MBP and the way OSX detects it.

Now I have a favour to ask, could some of you take a screenshot of this thread (full resolution in PNG format would be best, you can crop out the rest of your screen output to show only the needed bits) showing the thread title and some of the body text and post up your system specs/OSX version please? Also, if you don't mind running the following terminal command (it's safe, all it does it give you the model number of your panel and the colour profile) and posting the output it would really help:


Code: 
ioreg -lw0 | grep IODisplayEDID | sed "/[^<]*</s///" | xxd -p -r | strings -6

Thanks :)
 
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