by: Jamie Cuevas
Font Smoothing is a longstanding feature in MacOS that aims to make rendered screen text more legible, and it works by subtly blending the edges of display fonts with the background by using anti-aliasing. The idea is to reduce the jaggedness of screen text, but in practice nowadays it basically makes screen fonts on the Mac look slightly more bold if enabled, and less bold or even thin if disabled. Some users may prefer the look of one or the other, depending on the type of displays they’re using with their Mac, and some users may prefer to manually adjust font smoothing, or even turn it off completely. In modern versions of MacOS there is no longer a simple preferences toggle within System Settings to disable or enable font smoothing, however.
If you’re running macOS Sequoia, MacOS Ventura, macOS Sonoma, MacOS Big Sur, or macOS Monterey, and you want to disable font smoothing (or enable it), you can do so with the help of a super easy to use free app called “Font Smoothing Adjuster”.