I've noticed Quicklook not smoothing my pdf's correctly anymore. Going full-screen does give me nice anti-aliasing. Unfortunately this command doesn't seem to fix this for me. How can I go back to default?

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!

Font smothing was working in my Dell monitor, but the font color was almost gray, with this tip I got back to have the same I had in Leopard.

THANK YOU!

The setting won't affect applications that are already running; it only affects new applications. Since Finder and QuickLook are always running, you should log out and back in to restore proper font smoothing in Quick Look.

You can always go into the System Preferences and set it back to "Automatic Font Smoothing", but you won't want to do that unless you use a CRT monitor.

I assume this overides the setting for the whole system, not just the problem external monitor (when plugged in)? If I wanted to revert, what was the original setting? Thanks!

The setting affects all monitors connected to the system. So, for example, if it is set to "Automatic" and you have an external monitor connected to your MacBook, you will lose LCD font smoothing on both your external and internal displays.

If you never use a CRT monitor, you should set it to "2 - Best for LCD Display". To set it back to Automatic go in the System Preferences and select "Automatic Font Smoothing" checkbox.

Thanks a million!! Your tip helped me solve my issue. On my non-Apple monitor, I could get clear fonts now.

-jc

So I am having the same issue. Seems really bad on my Dell 24" Ultrasharp monitors.

Now, I do use 4 monitors for my setup.

When making this change, does it work across all monitors? Seems like it doesnt, but not sure.

Is there a planned fix for this?

Thanks.

The problem with the Dell is that it has its own sharpness setting. I just plugged in an Apple 24" Cinema Display that I have on loan - I'm used to a Dell 24" - and the fonts are much sharper than the Dell. It's hard to get a good font display, let alone colors, with the Dell.

Hi,

On my Snow Leopard 10.6.2, I cannot find the option Automatic or Standard in System Preferences->Appearance. Did Apple fix this bug?

How can we get back to the system default if I follow the command line?

Apple might have fixed the bug in 10.6.1 or 10.6.2, but I couldn't find anything specific about it in the release notes (I didn't check thoroughly though). In System Preferences->Appearance I get a checkbox that says 'Use LCD font smoothing when available', with no other options. I'm using 10.6.2, Acer & LG flat panels, ATI 4870, Early 2008 MacPro.

My guess would be that by checking this box, you'll get the default settings back.

This really saved my day. Ever since I got my wonderful MacBook Pro, I've been getting gray hairs because my external monitor from Asus (vw198T) just looked kinda crappy. But this tip just worked. Now all is good, and I'm a very happy camper :-)

Thank you very very much

Thank YOU !!!! God bless U, and my eyes !! The way that Apple renders fonts is killing me :)

I just got a big fat new Eizo, and for a second thought that either my eyes have gone blurry or something's not right with the monitor... Thank you so much for posting this fix!

Interestingly, Safari did use sub-pixel rendering while everything else (Mail, Finder) not.

Hi,

I tried to change font smoothing according to your instruction. After I typed in the command, I could not go into 'Appearance' menu under 'System Preferences.' I tried to repair disk with OS X installer DVD without success. Do you have an idea to reactivate the 'Appearance' menu? I am using OS 10.6.2.

I just upgraded from three CRTs to three Dell U2410 LCDs and could not believe how poor the text looked on the LCDs in comparison to my old CRTs. Though I can not understand why Apple would take away the old light-medium-strong prefpane menu, I am very grateful that this hint restores that functionality to activate proper sub-pixel rendering on the LCDs. Five stars for this one.

Should anyone need to remove the preference, restoring the default, use:

defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing

And to read the current value (a “…does not exist” error indicates the setting has been properly removed from the global domain):

defaults -currentHost read -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing

Yes, this worked for me too. Dell 20" external monitor. Never going to be as good as a Cinema display, but much better than before.