Chrome is displaying fonts slightly differently. WHYYYY
June 10, 2016 12:24 PM   Subscribe

For whatever reason, when I turned my computer on this morning Chrome is displaying fonts in a way that it just slightly different enough from the usual way to drive me insane. See here.

On the left is Firefox, which is displaying text in the way that Chrome normally would. On the right is the hideous abomination I am confronted with. What happened? How do I fix it? I swear to god I am not imagining this and Chrome normally looks exactly like the image on the left. Please do not tell me to just use Firefox instead.
posted by zeusianfog to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)
 
Is it possible that the last time you were using chrome, you zoomed in ever so slightly? It looks like it's at something like 105%.
posted by pazazygeek at 12:36 PM on June 10, 2016


Response by poster: Alas, zoom is at 100%, as ever.
posted by zeusianfog at 12:38 PM on June 10, 2016


it looks like you're zoomed in slightly. It sometimes happens when you're holding down ctrl and scroll with the mouse wheel.
posted by INFJ at 12:39 PM on June 10, 2016


I also can't tell from the screenshot very well, but it also like like it's possible that font anti aliasing might have changed in your display settings. Apologies if I missed it, but are you on mac or PC? Have you played any full screen 3D games lately? Could be something weird with your video card settings?
posted by pazazygeek at 12:42 PM on June 10, 2016


Response by poster: Here is another example. The text on the right is more pixelated and less "smooth."
posted by zeusianfog at 12:42 PM on June 10, 2016


aliasing / anti-aliasing?
posted by yesster at 12:42 PM on June 10, 2016


Best answer: Well, you're not alone.
Issue 618249 Font have started appearing thinner on sites

Unfortunately that issue has been marked as "won't fix" (?) with the advice to adjust your clear type settings. But as you have shown, fonts look fine on Firefox, so system settings don't seem to be the thing here?

Anyways, I'd watch the reddit thread and issue thread for potential solutions.
posted by Lorin at 12:44 PM on June 10, 2016


Response by poster: Sorry, I'm using Windows. Wouldn't anti-aliasing be a global setting and not localized to Chrome?
posted by zeusianfog at 12:44 PM on June 10, 2016


This happened to me once! And after a few days it went back to normal despite me doing nothing. Maybe it will resolve itself with the next Chrome update?
posted by something something at 12:46 PM on June 10, 2016


Some more information on the changes here and a suggestion that some might be able to improve things with this Font Rendering Enhancer app.
posted by Lorin at 1:18 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Thanks for the further info, Lorin--that extension doesn't seem to be doing the trick for me, sadly.
posted by zeusianfog at 4:48 PM on June 10, 2016


FWIW, on visual inspection the problem is Chrome isn't anti-aliasing your fonts. Your image on the left is anti-aliased and also uses ClearType. Your image on right does not. If the two apps are rendering this way simultaneously, it seems certainly to be a Chrome bug. But it might be worth resetting your ClearType and font settings in Windows just in case, like the suggestion in the Reddit thread.
posted by Nelson at 9:11 AM on June 11, 2016


A very similar thing happened to me and I disabled "DirectWrite Windows" in about://flags and that did the trick. I've read that there are other settings in that list that can mess with rendering and display, but DirectWrite did it for me.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 7:01 AM on June 13, 2016


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