Is there any way to TRULY turn off font smoothing?

[Rubycon]

While not as bad as cleartype in Windows, I simply abhor the way it makes text look!
I've tried some of the tricks and hacks but it's not acceptable. I would prefer it to be completely OFF system wide. OSX Lion latest build guys...

 

[TheStu]

The google is letting me down on this one.

 

[runawayprisoner]

Have you tried setting the minimum smoothing font size to a very large number using TinkerTool?

 

[Rubycon]

Have you tried setting the minimum smoothing font size to a very large number using TinkerTool?

Yes this was the first thing I did. Set it up to some ridiculously high value. Problem is not everything obeys. I just want the display to look crisp. I guess it's OK to most people that don't have 20/15 vision up close.

 

[TheStu]

What is your display? Size and res? I find that I have no problems with the font smoothing on the 11" Air but that has a reasonably high DPI (it's not 13" 1080p high, but it's not bad).

 

[Rubycon]

17" Macbook Pro here, 1920x1200. (the last of the GOOD resolutions! NO 1080 crap for me! 😉 )

When I boot into Win7 (bootcamp) and have cleartype OFF the display looks soooo crisp.

 

[TheStu]

Alright, well that one also has high DPI... so uh... hrm, can't help you. Just a preference thing I guess. That and my vision is crap, take my glasses off and I can barely see my own hands 😉

I assume you tried the terminal commands as well?

 

[Rubycon]

Alright, well that one also has high DPI... so uh... hrm, can't help you. Just a preference thing I guess. That and my vision is crap, take my glasses off and I can barely see my own hands 😉

I assume you tried the terminal commands as well?

I would if I had a list of commands to try! 😉

 

[alfa147x]

I would if I had a list of commands to try! 😉

try this:

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 0

The number 2 here corresponds to Medium - Best for Flat Panel. You may also use 1 for light smoothing, and 3 for strong smoothing, as per the original OS X font smoothing options.

I've changed the command from 2 to 0.

Then do this:

killall Finder

link


Edit:
Confirmed working on my hackintosh. I did have to logout and log back in. Looks like 0 is off or very close to it.

 

[Rubycon]

Tried that and it looks worse, there's no consistency! Some things are not smoothed and others are. The font management is horrible in OSX!

 

[runawayprisoner]

Some apps do their own font smoothing technique. You can't help with those then.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Some apps do their own font smoothing technique. You can't help with those then.

That's crazy.

Then again, that's what firefox was doing, when they first introduced hardware-acceleration. Some of the text on the page and the tab labels and stuff was smoothed, and some wasn't. It looked horrible for quite a few versions, till they got it all straightened out.