Chrome's fonts look off

So since maybe a week or so, my the fonts on certain websites are looking rather off... They're jagged and often bigger than they used to be.

As an example, here’s the same page in both Chrome and Firefox (note: that the Chrome page used to look like the Firefox page):

^{Click for full size}

As you can see (hopefully), the font in Firefox is much crisper. And it’s not just this website that doesn’t work properly, there are several others (yet not all, which is weird).

Anybody know how to fix this? I'd rather not switch browsers.

EDIT: Browser version is 31.0.1650.63 m

EDIT: Things I already tried: Resetting to default settings; Trying to enable/disable Direct Write (option isnt available in the list); Adding "/high-dpi-support=1 /force-device-scale-factor=1" to executable

Cleverbird

Posted 2014-10-05T12:08:19.450

Reputation: 209

possible duplicate of Chrome 37 UI got larger and became blurry on 125% DPI

– DavidPostill – 2014-10-05T12:18:36.550

Answers

Fixed it! Apparently my Chrome was no longer updating for whatever reason... I managed to fix it with the help of the following link:

http://www.howtogeek.com/186330/how-to-fix-and-adjust-automatic-updating-in-google-chrome/

ADDENDUM: Chrome version 53 had this issue with fonts. The issue was fixed in version 54. Fixing the failed auto-update function allowed the actual fix for the poor font quality issue.

Cleverbird

Posted 2014-10-05T12:08:19.450

Reputation: 209

On Windows 10 & Chrome version 52 I could not find any "DirectWrite" option in the experiments tab.

However, I was able to resolve the issue by disabling a different experiment:

Set "Accelerated 2D Canvas" to "Disabled"

(In the browser's address bar, go to chrome://flags#disable-accelerated-2d-canvas, change the setting, relaunch the browser.)

Since the fix for this issue has clearly changed, I would suggest in general turning off any hardware-accelerated text-rendering/2D-rendering features in the future if this fix stops working.

On Google Chrome 55, this issue appears to have cropped up again. As anticipated, the fix was disabling hardware acceleration, it just changed locations.

The new fix (for me) appears to be:

Settings -> Show advanced settings... -> System
UNCHECK "Use hardware acceleration when available"

Coruscate5

Posted 2014-10-05T12:08:19.450

Reputation: 844

2GDI rendering has been removed from Chrome for Windows as of version 52, so the option to disable DirectWrite has been removed. – Brian Nixon – 2016-08-10T17:09:59.117

Bummer, didn't work for me either. (Windows 7, Chrome 52, regular zoom. The obsolete DirectWrite option did do the trick for me in older versions of Chrome.) – Arjan – 2016-08-15T06:48:02.403

For future reference, as for the removal of GDI: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=579678

– Arjan – 2016-08-15T06:59:02.240

Worked for me today. Chrome fonts weren't displaying correctly as of about a week ago. Perhaps a NVidia graphics driver update screwed with this? – Phlucious – 2016-09-13T17:53:49.960

@Phlucious I have intel graphics drivers, so I don't think it's an Nvidia issue. – mrswadge – 2016-11-30T15:18:28.757

This worked for me in version 54, and thank FSM!! – dldnh – 2016-11-30T19:59:35.417

@mrswadge I had this happen again recently. In my case I think the cause was creating the Chrome window while in a Remote Desktop session from home, then logging into the workstation when I got back to work. Because Remote Desktop uses a different system font than my system default, closing that Chrome window messed with Chrome's defaults somehow. – Phlucious – 2016-12-07T00:00:43.117

@Phlucious: This is a very possible reason. I also use RDP quite often, so your theory seems plausible. – mrswadge – 2016-12-07T09:35:17.477

@Phlucious This issue happened to me right after a remote support session. I use a pretty high-resolution monitor, and I would imagine the support representative was using an HD monitor or lower. Your theory is probably correct. This issue also affected all of my Electron apps. – NetherGranite – 2019-02-22T01:24:57.167

This worked for me:

Open Google Chrome
Open a new tab and enter the following in the address bar: chrome://flags/#disable-direct-write
Click "enable" to enable this switch, disabling the use of Microsoft DirectWrite by Google Chrome.
Close and re-open Chrome.

Mike Stevens

Posted 2014-10-05T12:08:19.450

Reputation: 121

Easiest fix I have seen for Chrome v53 is to enable 2G for web font loading - chrome://flags/#enable-webfonts-intervention-v2

New version of User Agent Intervention for WebFonts loading. Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS, Android Enable New version of User Agent Intervention for WebFonts loading. #enable-webfonts-intervention-v2

Enabled:2G

ToddG

Posted 2014-10-05T12:08:19.450

Reputation: 41

Thanks, this worked for me, as did this solution http://superuser.com/a/1112095/155435. I was then able to revert all settings to default and it appeared to still be okay.

– mrswadge – 2016-11-30T15:22:20.587

This also worked for me. Note: I had to disable the "accelerated 2d canvas" and "Use hardware acceleration when available" settings. – gr1zzly be4r – 2017-02-15T15:29:45.617

In my case (Chrome 58 on Windows 10) I did following: I first went to:

chrome://flags/#top-chrome-md

And Founnd the option titled:

UI Layout for the browser's top chrome Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS

Then selected Normal from corresponding drop-down and restarted Chrome.

The problem solved.

Farshid

Posted 2014-10-05T12:08:19.450

Reputation: 155

When Chrome is running, right click the Chrome icon in the task bar. Then right-click the line that reads "Google Chrome" in the grey area, click "Properties". Go to "Compatibility" tab. And check the entry in the lower half that says "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings".

This is due to a current problem with Chrome's font scaling if Windows' font/content scaling feature is activated (i.e. if you have a high resolution / big screen and set Windows to make things bigger so that you can actually read them).

Florian Golemo

Posted 2014-10-05T12:08:19.450

Reputation: 121

Odd. I take you closed all instances of Chrome after you did that and then started Chrome anew, right? Also check in task manager that no other instance is running - or log out and back in. Also you DO use DPI scaling in Windows, don't you? (Because I had the exact same issue) – Florian Golemo – 2014-10-05T13:47:43.157

My DPI scaling is set to the default 100% – Cleverbird – 2014-10-05T16:06:20.477

Ah, okay, that changes the picture... try opening this URL in Chrome and clicking 'enable' - then relaunch chrome (on the bottom there is a button for that): chrome://flags/#disable-direct-write

...also please edit your original post and list what you've already done. – Florian Golemo – 2014-10-05T18:02:30.800

I dont have anything called "Direct write" or "DirectWrite" in those options. Changed my original post to reflect the things I tried. – Cleverbird – 2014-10-05T21:13:46.063

For me it was simply monitor settings. I use a HDTV as my monitor, and it was using a preset that worked fine for gaming, but the contrast, brightness, and other settings made text look like it was being anti-aliased wrong. Simply changing to a different preset fixed it for me.

redOctober13

Posted 2014-10-05T12:08:19.450

Reputation: 111

Resetting all flags to default did it for me.

ianbeks

Posted 2014-10-05T12:08:19.450

Reputation: 101

chrome//:flags and disable "LCD Text Antialiasing"

J.Flesch

Posted 2014-10-05T12:08:19.450

Reputation: 1

If you read the actual answers you will see this was a specific issue with a specific version of Chrome, and that the question was answered 2 years ago. Your answer is a good answer, just not for this question. – music2myear – 2017-01-05T00:46:38.093

I had the same problem as well, what fixed it for me was the following: When you install anything from Adobe, it will install the Creative Cloud application. Open this app, go to "elements", "fonts" and disable all synced fonts.

Johannes

Posted 2014-10-05T12:08:19.450

Reputation: 1

I fixed it by turning on ClearType text in my Windows 7 Display properties.

user779423

Posted 2014-10-05T12:08:19.450

Reputation: 1

Windows Registry editing fixed the font thickness issue for me completely, we can tune the font thicknes/darkness by calibrating FONTSMOOTHINGGAMMA value to between 150 and 190 hexadecimal( 336 to 400 decimal )

START -> RUN -> REGEDIT
search for FONTSMOOTHINGGAMMA by keying "Ctrl F" ( will automatically take us to CurrentUser\ControlPanel\Desktop path)
right-click mouse on FONTSMOOTHINGGAMMA on the rightside, Modify... enter any thing between 150 and 190 hexadecimal. (the Lower the value, the thicker the fonts.)
close the REGEDIT tool
LOGOFF and then LOGON

Now all the fonts are very thick & very dark in Chrome Browser.

But we must make sure that ClearType smoothing is enabled in Windows ( controlPanel -> personalization -> appearance -> Effects -> ClearType smooth check (ticked box) )

                     OR  alternately in RegEdit ...

FONTSMOOTHING=2 FONTSMOOTHINGTYPE=2
FONTSMOOTHINGORIENTATION=1 for LCD-screen, 0 for CRT-screen

YVRao

Posted 2014-10-05T12:08:19.450

Reputation: 1

I encountered the same poor-font-rendering issue immediately after making a system tweak. Undoing the tweak corrected the rendering issue. In an attempt to speed up my machine, I modified System Properties/Advanced/Performance to adjust for best performance, which disabled "Smooth edges of screen fonts." When that option was re-enabled, the font rendering issue disappeared.

user516958

Posted 2014-10-05T12:08:19.450

Reputation: 1