Snow Leopard vs. 3rd Party LCD Displays

In Mac, Typography on 18 August 2009 tagged , , , with 35 comments

Update: CWS provided a solution in comment: opening Terminal and entering defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 2, after re-login, everything is back to normal again!

Update: Turns out the problem is not just from Dell, various 3rd party display manufactures including Samsung, LG, HP and EIZO also have the same issue.

A very tricky issue has been bothering me for a few months: in Snow Leopard, whenever I connected my Dell 2408WFP monitor, every app launched after that will have sub-pixel antialiasing (aka. LCD Font Smoothing) disabled.

For a typography freak like me, it is a huge disaster.

The full story comes in two parts:

  1. Prior versions of Mac OS X used to have this “Font smoothing style” option in System Preferences -> Appearances, it is not as complete as fontconfig. But good enough for general public. A very unfortunate thing I covered about a few months ago is, they simplified that option to a checkbox: Use LCD font smoothing when available.

    in Leopard

    in Leopard

    in Snow Leopard

    in Snow Leopard

  2. But how did Snow Leopard determine whether it is “available”? It relies from information retrieved from the driver of the display. Let’s say if you have ten displays connected, and one of them is a CRT display instead of LCD, then all the applications in your system will not be able to use LCD font smoothing. Here comes the epic fail: Dell 2408WFP (and Dell 3008WFP, AFAIK), a perfectly fine LCD display, is not recognized as one by Mac OS X (both Leopard and Snow Leopard have this issue, I haven’t check earlier versions).

(Though my Dell 2408WFP is not recorgnized as a LCD display in Leopard, I can force sub-pixel rendering with the “Font smoothing style” option.)

With the combination of these two problems, I’m stucked. Either I can give up Snow Leopard or get a new display. But I simply don’t have enough space on my desk for another display. (And I really happy with the Dell 2408WFP, it works with all other devices: Xbox 360, Wii, PS2, etc., so I won’t abandon it for an Apple LED Cinema Display for apparent reasons.)

This morning I just got a reply for my bug report from Apple Developer Connection, it said:

Thank you for contacting us regarding Bug ID# 6975903. The report you have submitted has been determined by engineering to be an issue with LDC Display. Please know that we are doing our best to inform Dell of the issue with the hope that they can implement the necessary changes. Please feel free to contact them regarding this issue to help alert them of its importance.

I felt even more desperate after receiving this. Because it seemed too rare that Apple (and Dell) won’t even care to fix. And since I have little knowledge about why and what need to be fixed from Dell, it will be really hard for me to push Dell on this issue.

To be honest, what I’m asking is pretty simple: if we cannot get back the original font smoothing level option, at least give us a hidden preference item to turn on LCD font smoothing, that won’t hurt the usability of Snow Leopard, right?


35 Comments

I’m in the same boat and it’s just awful! Everything looks terrible at CRT-style font hinting. This is most painful as I’m also running Windows 7 and it finally looks terrific.

Posted by Eugene on 18 August 2009 @ 10pm

I am having the exact same problem. Snow Leopard, 2408wpf. Text is absolutely a migraine inducing nightmare. Surely they will fix this. Perhaps there is a hack to force smoothing?

Posted by Ben on 20 August 2009 @ 8am

I was using with HP2475w and wacom cintiq. And I was struggle with same problem with you in Snow Leopard.

It’s very not good. Why apple make things worse? I can’t understand.

Posted by DJ.HAN on 25 August 2009 @ 9am

Try opening Terminal and entering “defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 2″. A log-off or restart may be required.

Posted by CWS on 25 August 2009 @ 10am

Thanks CWS, that works great.

Posted by jjgod on 25 August 2009 @ 1pm

Apple, Apple… same for my display (Samsung). The solution works (but for how long??? I also filed a bug on this). Apple, you have to understand that removing things such as font rendering quality that makes you what you are is certainly not a smart move.

Posted by rsebbe on 25 August 2009 @ 9pm

I’m using an EIZO S2411W and having the same issues.

Posted by chris on 25 August 2009 @ 9pm

Same Problems over here. Made some Pics:

http://thinkworkdone.com/sl-font-smoothing/

Display :

LG L204WT

Posted by tvdeyen on 27 August 2009 @ 3pm

I’ll stick with ‘AppleFontSmoothing -int 1′ not 2. Much lighter smoothing. 2 is to blurry for my opinion:

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 1

Posted by tvdeyen on 27 August 2009 @ 4pm

Same problem here, with an IBM/Lenovo display, identified as LEN L171p.

Grr, I spent an hour trying to track down the preferences file for this.

Posted by Darren Stone on 29 August 2009 @ 12pm

I’m glad I found this. I was having the same problem with my Dell monitor.

Posted by Paul D on 29 August 2009 @ 9pm

Nice description and great that a fix is available – I’ve added a link to this article on my page at http://www.prepressure.com/fonts/basics/snow-leopard-fonts that describes Snow Leopard’s font handling. It is weird that Apple take an option away that was useful and not that difficult to understand. Didn’t Einstein say: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler”?

Posted by Laurens on 1 September 2009 @ 3am

Figures. I have the exact same problem with an Acer monitor

Posted by Guru Panguji on 2 September 2009 @ 9am

Unfortunately this fix is not working for me. Yes, it turns on anti-aliasing on fonts, but it doesn’t look like the Leopard font smoothing. Instead it looks like ClearType, is not as smooth and shows red & blue artifacts around letters.

In the MacRumors forums it is recommended to turn off sub-pixel anti-aliasing as well: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=8417671

I hope Apple just comes with a fix for this, because reading on my monitor is so much less comfortable now.

Posted by Arnoud on 4 September 2009 @ 4pm

@Arnoud: Non-subpixel antialiasing should be the default option if you haven’t changed any preferences. Have you tried defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 1? It could be better.

Posted by jjgod on 4 September 2009 @ 4pm

Yes, I’ve tried that. The problem is that the text in the menu bar (from iStat Menus for example) doesn’t look as in Leopard when I use the “fix” (none of the settings). When I turn off LCD font smoothing in the prefs, it does look as in Leopard there, but then the text in browsers, emails, text editing apps etc. looks horrible (like ClearType). Each fixes it partly, but it’s one or the other for me, and the “fix” never manages to show the font smoothing quality of Leopard.. :(

Posted by Arnoud on 5 September 2009 @ 3am

謝謝 jjgod 和 CWS 朋友，解決了我的顯示器問題，現在字體效果很好。

Posted by MCDawang on 9 October 2009 @ 9pm

Thanks a lot! “defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 2″ helped a lot for me after installing Snow Leopard and seeing some fonts (not all) with horrible jaggies! My configuration: Mac mini (2009), OSX 10.6.1, Monitor Acer AL2216W sd (22″). Thanks again!

Posted by Thomas on 10 October 2009 @ 6pm

This seemed to work for me until I connected a second display to my Mac Pro. Does it make sense that a second display would cause problems? Any suggestions for fixing Font Smoothing with two displays on Snow Leopard? Is Apple just trying to get us to buy their displays?!?

Posted by Ryan on 5 January 2010 @ 1am

@Ryan Same thing. One monitor is fine, the other is not. Very frustrating.

Posted by Jason on 8 January 2010 @ 2am

I am having the same problem, The font is blurry on the computer screen.I have tried everything…I switched to Mac to avoid problems…

Posted by BabethGuion on 23 January 2010 @ 3pm

Is this problem the same as getting font displayed wider than usual on mac and not on windows? I thought it was just a safari issue and so i downloaded firefox and crome, but the issue is the same on all.. on firefox the space between the letters is also more and this cases the website to break the layout. This is very irritating, i chaned the smooth pixel option now to render below 12 px and it seems to work on safari.. not a perfect font but i could live with it but the problem remains unchanged on FF. Any clue how to fix this?

Posted by Prashant on 23 January 2010 @ 4pm

hello….i’ve a 21,5 Asus (vh222)…i tried the fix….. (option 1,2,3 and then restart)

but the problem remain !!!

what the hell….how can i resolve this ? it’s a tremendous bug…incredible!

Posted by chris on 12 February 2010 @ 7am

I’ve the same problem, just buy a new i mac…I connected a samsung syncmaster 206bw by mac vga cable and I’m not able to set the native resolution of the external monitor, it doesn’t appear in the resolution choices…horrible

Posted by Luca on 15 February 2010 @ 10pm

Solved, I changed from VGA cable to DVI cable and everything works fine.

Posted by Luca on 18 February 2010 @ 9pm

Because Microsoft and Apple released their new operating systems almost simultaneously, it is not surprising for computer enthusiasts to compare Microsoft’s Windows 7 with Apple’s Snow Leopard to see which is better. But while hardcore fans on both sides will always refuse to give in to the other on the issue of which operating system is better, it may be a better idea simply to compare the differences of the two. Windows 7 vs. Snow Leopard: Five Main Differences

Posted by alfred liwanag, Jr. on 18 March 2010 @ 11pm

I hope Apple just comes with a fix for this, because reading on my monitor is so much less comfortable now.

Posted by Diseño Web on 21 October 2010 @ 8pm

I’ve tried every fixes you mentioned with no success. My config still have jagged fonts (Mac mini late 2009, Snow Leopard, LG L1718S monitor with miniDVI – VGA connection.

Posted by Andras on 22 December 2010 @ 6am

@Andras: I haven’t tried connecting it with a VGA adaptor, could be the problem.

Posted by jjgod on 28 December 2010 @ 5am

Hi, How did you know “monitor is not recorgnized as a LCD display in Leopard”? I have dell sp2208wfp, and it has color profile named “sp2208wfp” ….

Posted by fanfan on 9 February 2011 @ 8pm

I found it. As the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering said, take a screen shot with text in it, then enlarge the picture and check if the the text is multicolor or not.

Posted by fanfan on 14 February 2011 @ 5pm

Can anyone in here help me? I tried the defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 1 command in terminal. Now it looks even worse, with colors on the text. how can i undo this and get it back to the way it was originally? Im not good with terminal. Thanks!

Posted by Jacoby on 18 February 2011 @ 1am

Figures. I have the exact same problem with an Acer monitor

Posted by estudio villegas on 29 June 2011 @ 12am

I have to use terminal to workt with GIT very often. It’s killing me to see beautiful font anti-aliasing on my MBP and the crappy on my Mac mini, particularly when they are lying on my table side by side. Thanks CWS for the fix and jiang for the great blog!

Posted by Kelvin Lee on 13 August 2011 @ 3pm

I have this problem with one of my cheaper generic brand monitors :( Nothing gives me a migraine faster.

Posted by CS James Adams on 17 January 2012 @ 10pm

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