Font smoothing on a retina machine..

[MarcusCarpenter]

Disable LCD font smoothing in preferences/general

everything looks MUCH better #

 

[maflynn]

everything looks MUCH better #

Everything is relative - I prefer the font smoothing

 

[MarcusCarpenter]

Everything is relative - I prefer the font smoothing

Everything looks much more sharp to me, reminds me of the early Yosemite Betas before the font was changed

 

[leman]

IMO, font smoothing shouldn't even be an option on retina machines... It is a 'hack' that employs certain idiosyncratic physical properties of LCD displays to make the text appear smoother. However, it can't work on the retina display simply because of the behind-the-scene resampling that the OS does to the images when running in a scaled mode. And the granularity of pixels on a retina display is small enough to make font smoothing unnecessary.

 

[xgman]

thx for the tip. will try it.

 

[cardwizard]

i don't see a difference ?

 

[ABC5S]

i don't see a difference ?

Me either. No difference yet

 

[GatorGhost]

Me either. No difference yet

Actually on my 5k mac it is worse...I guess it is in the eyes of the beholder as to what we all prefer.

 

[newellj]

i don't see a difference ?

Me either. No difference yet

You have to log out and back in to have the setting take effect.

My take on this is the other way around - I think it's fine on the retina display and really needs to be turned off for the MBA TN displays. YMMV!

 

[dmccloud]

i don't see a difference ?

The best place to see the difference instantly is the system preferences - General panel and the time. They both change as I toggle that setting.

 

[ABC5S]

You have to log out and back in to have the setting take effect.

My take on this is the other way around - I think it's fine on the retina display and really needs to be turned off for the MBA TN displays. YMMV!

Have done so. No difference noticed on my MacBook Pro Mid 2014 retina

 

[newellj]

Have done so. No difference noticed on my MacBook Pro Mid 2014 retina

It's possible that there isn't any difference, or that the difference depends on settings, with the retina displays. I did see some difference on an MBA TN display, though it wasn't dramatic.

 

[GGJstudios]

Disable LCD font smoothing in preferences/general

everything looks MUCH better #

I don't see any difference either way. Of course, my old eyes don't see any difference between retina and non-retina, either.

With font smoothing:

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Without font smoothing:

​

 

[Sheza]

It seems to make fonts look a little less 'bold' on a retina display.

However I have to have it enabled because it look much better when docked to as 1080p display, which it is most of the time.

 

[xgman]

I tried it off, but I hated it. I need the bolder fonts to see them clearly with my old eyes.

 

[GatorGhost]

I tried it off, but I hated it. I need the bolder fonts to see them clearly with my old eyes.

I agree...mostly so on the menu bar the font smoothing is much better with my iMac retina...no question...maybe it is better on a laptop. I have no way to know seeing as I have no MacBook retina to gauge it against. The beauty here is the font smoothing selection is optional as per the user. Win win!

 

[Eduardboon]

I turned it off as it gives more space between the letters. Especially on scaled resolutions it looks a lot better with smoothing turned off.