{"id":4887,"date":"2018-09-25T16:06:05","date_gmt":"2018-09-25T11:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/?p=4887"},"modified":"2021-01-25T20:17:07","modified_gmt":"2021-01-25T15:17:07","slug":"fix-macos-mojave-font-rendering-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/fix-macos-mojave-font-rendering-issue\/","title":{"rendered":"Fix macOS Mojave Font Rendering Issue |
Big Sur Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just updated to macOS Mojave only to find out that there is a terrible font rendering issue for almost all the ElectronJS based apps like VSCode<\/a> my code editor of choice.<\/p>\n

After researching a little bit, messing around with system defaults, less to my surprise, I found out that Apple has disabled Subpixel antialiasing for text in macOS Mojave. It’s gone.<\/p>\n

Little more research led to a fix, all you have to do is open up your Terminal<\/code> application (COMMAND (\u2318)<\/kbd> + SPACE<\/kbd> then search for Terminal<\/code>) and run the following command.<\/p>\n

\"\ud83d\udd25\" I’ve just launched a course called VSCode Power User \u2192<\/a>
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defaults write -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled -bool FALSE<\/code><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

\n

\"5<\/a><\/div>\n

\n

\u26a0\ufe0f Using FALSE\/NO is the same since it’s a boolean data type.
\n\ud83d\udc68\u200d\ud83d\udcbb I’m teaching thousands of devs how to become VSCode Power Users<\/a> \u2192
\n\u2705 This site is super fast?! It’s hosted with Kinsta on Google servers \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n

This will lead to the font smoothing to be enabled \u2014 especially for non-retina external monitors. You’ll thank me later. You need to sign out and sign back in or restart your Mac before you can see your changes after running this command<\/strong>. That’s pretty much all.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

\n
\n

\ud83e\uddd0#<\/a><\/h2>\n

Explanation: What’s Happening In there?!#<\/a><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Some folks in the comments asked about how I stumbled upon this fix, so for the sake of technical know-how, I am updating this post with more details.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udfaf Apple’s macOS normally has a set of defaults<\/code> that you can change programmatically. I have such an opinionated workflow for whenever I install my OS from scratch. That’s a story for another day.<\/p>\n

\ud83e\udd16 I remember in the past, with High Sierra, I had to enable subpixel font rendering on non-Apple LCDs. That was the AppleFontSmoothing<\/code> option which I set to true, or one could directly add -int 1<\/code> for that option.<\/p>\n

\ud83e\udd14 I was unable to find that setting in macOS Mojave defaults<\/code>. I kept looking in there. Especially in the Apple Global Domain<\/code> settings, since that’s where the old setting was.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\ude43 Aha! I found a new setting in there, it’s called CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled<\/code> \u2014 it’s quite evident what this setting does. Disables the rendering of smooth fonts. It was set to 1<\/code> which means it was set to TRUE<\/code> or YES<\/code>.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

\"Macos<\/a><\/div>\n
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So, all I had to do to try my luck was to disable this font smoothing disabler, i.e. enable to font smoothing on non-Apple\/non-retina LEDs. For that I wrote this following command:<\/p>\n

defaults write -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled -bool FALSE<\/code><\/p>\n