Mac Mini (2018) font is blurry on Samsung Syncmaster 2494HM

Question

I have recently purchased a Mac Mini (2018 Model), and connected it to my Samsung SyncMaster 2494HM LCD monitor via HDMI to DVI cable. The video output was far from optimal, and text especially was fuzzy and blurry. In the beginning, I was using HDMI-HDMI, and the switch to DVI had no visible effect.

Here is an example:

The picture quality was fine when the monitor was connected to a W indows 10 PC. Here are the steps I have taken:

I tried enabling font smoothing, which helped in the mac menu's, but didn't do anything in other applications. I disabled AV mode in my monitor settings. I set my monitor resolution to scaled at 1920 x 1080. I tried DVI-HDMI, DVI-USB-C, and HDMI-HDMI connections.

I am running macOS Catalina. How can I fix this problem?

Answer 1

Apple is less concerned about non-Retina displays (like yours) these days. This also means that unfortunately font rendering is quite bad on these by default.

According to various sources around the net (here’s one), you can improve the situation by issuing the following command in Terminal:

defaults write -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled -bool NO

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

Keep in mind though that Apple has long since used a different approach to font rendering compared to Microsoft. Microsoft basically snaps to pixels whenever possible, accepting that the result may be inaccurate while providing a crisp look and better readability, especially with small font sizes/low DPI. Apple does not snap to pixels but uses the correct geometry, even if it results in blurry fonts.

Typography is complicated.