MacOS – AppleFontSmoothing Has No Effect On My ViewSonic VX2450

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I've followed the advice in these questions and am not having any luck. No matter what I try, the fonts are rendered so poorly on the external monitor.

My environment –

  • MacBook Pro 15" Early 2011
  • ViewSonic VX2450 External Monitor using DVI.

I've tried values for "X" (0,1,2 and 3) for this command without effect —

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int X

I've also tried each of these values along with various combinations of values for "Use LCD font smoothing when available" and "Turn off text smoothing for fonts sizes X and smaller" in System Preferences > General. All without any luck.

Can anyone offer me some advice? Thanks!

Best Answer

A couple things to consider:

  • Do you see a difference with the various AppleFontSmoothing settings on your main display?
  • Are you seeing this in all apps, or just one or two?
    • Some programs render fonts independently of the OS, so changing the global font smoothing won't make a difference in them
  • What is the physical connection between the MacBook and the Viewsonic?
    1. mDP to VGA adapter?
    2. mDP to DVI adapter?
    3. mDP to HDMI adapter?
      • Analog signals on VGA might not support the resolution
      • Make sure any OSD controls for the port you're using have the correct settings
  • How have you configured the Viewsonic, relative to your MacBook's main panel?
    1. Mirroring the internal display
      • Select a resolution for your main display that is an even factor of your Viewsonic's native resolution
    2. Set as its own independent display
      • Choose the Viewsonic's native resolution

Hope one of these leads you down a path that ends in a pretty picture.

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