Disable anti-aliased fonts

Jun 05, '01 12:13:35PM

Contributed by: robg

Caught this one over on the OS X Talk site. It seems "Dead Ed" has found a terminal command that disables anti-aliased text on a system-wide (per user) basis. A note on the OS X Talk site warns that text is actually harder to read on LCD displays, but that is does look sharper on CRTs.

To disable anti-aliased text, open a terminal and type:

defaults write CoreGraphics CGFontDisableAntialiasing YES
To re-enable the anti-aliasing, simply reverse the command:
defaults write CoreGraphics CGFontDisableAntialiasing NO
I tried the hack myself tonight, and it does work - you need to logout/login to see the changes. In a nutshell, I really didn't like it much. It looks like the fonts are missing bits - perhaps the hack just disables the gray pieces, leaving a somewhat chunky black font. When I turned it back on and tried to restart, my machine locked up when the Finder started. Even remote SSh was dead. After one more restart, all has been fine. Use at your own risk...

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