Blurry external monitor

[TomOSeven]

Hi all,

I'm having a lot of trouble with my external monitor and I'm hoping you can help me.

I use a Lenovo T25m USB-C monitor at 1920*1200 resolution.

In Windows 10, everything looks nice and crisp. I use it on native resolution with a 125% scaling factor and the scaling factor has no effect whatsoever on crispness, only on size.

In MacOS (Big Sur 11.01), that's not the case.

Even at the default resolution, everything's blurry. Fonts, but also UI elements. And everything's tiny.
But I can't find an option to scale it up. I can reduce the resolution to 1440*900, but while that makes things bigger, it also makes it even blurrier.

Is there a way around this? I didn't expect MacOS to struggle with a task that basic, to be honest. So I'm really hoping there's user error here.

Thank you!

PS.: Everything looks razor sharp when I start a game in full screen at native resolution.

 

[Fishrrman]

Take a look at this page.

How to Fix Blurry Fonts on macOS Mojave (With Subpixel Antialiasing)

Apple's macOS Mojave disables subpixel antialiasing, also known as font smoothing, by default.

www.howtogeek.com

It was written "for Mojave", but I think the terminal commands will still work with later versions of the OS.

You may have to try EACH "smoothing level" to find the one that YOU like.
It might help to keep notes on a scrap of paper as you try them.

 

[adefig]

I am having exactly the same issues as TomOSeven. I am using a M1 macmini with the following monitor: Samsung LS34J550WQUXEN 34" Ultra Wide LED Monitor - WQHD 3440x1440, Freesync, 2 x HDMI, DisplayPort, Dark Blue/Grey.

The Blurry fonts link shared by Fishrrman did not work for me. Although each setting slightly changes the appearance of text, it does not fix the blurriness; rather, it changes the "thickness" of the text.

I have tried using HDMI, HDMI2, and Display port to USB-C cables, and none of these make a difference either.

Videos and images look fantastic on the monitor, but as TomOSeven says text and UI elements are extremely blurry. There is also no option to change the size of the OS text.

 

[Brian33]

I once read a MacRumors posting that seemed to be saying that this happens when macOS doesn't get the monitor's "EDID" data. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Display_Identification_Data). I don't know if that's your problem or not, but I remember something about a utility to gather EDID data and you move it into an "Overrides" directory somewhere.

I found a different thread that seems to talk about it:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/big-sur-force-rgb-mode-for-displays.2268099/

 

[TomOSeven]

text.

Exactly what this guy says.

Videos and full screen games look great, UI elements are blurry. Tried the fix outlined earlier, still blurry.

The fix concerning the color spectrum doesn't apply, I can just use my monitor's color profile (shows up in system settings) and that uses RGB.

 

[TomOSeven]

I couldn’t fix the issue after extensive research.
apparently MacOS simply doesn’t support FHD displays any more, so the scaling issues aren’t a bug. currently hooked up to a Raspi and everything looks crisp and nice.

So I decided to return the MacBook and stick to a Thinkpad.