How to have correct fonts on Windows

Alright, this is a bit of an unusual situation, as I rarely blog about very down-to-earth everyday technical tweaks, but my fonts looked so ugly on Windows 11 that I had to look into it.

This post is essentially mirroring this StackOverflow post.

Step 1: fix your computer

The first step is to change the way the entire OS renders fonts.

Quickest way is to just push the keys Win+R

(I made this using this very nice website by the way), you should see a small window pop-up on the bottom-left of your screen

You should type exactly what’s in my prompt: sysdm.cpl

This will open a window, click on advanced

Then (after clicking on the Performance button) you just tick a few boxes, most importantly the “Smooth edges” option.

Last step: fixing your Browser

If you use Google Chrome (or Chromium) like me, you might’ve noticed the fonts looking like shit. That is not you hallucinating (at least not if it’s still close to 2023) !

Chrome has as set of experimental features it can toggle on or off, which you can find at chrome://flags/ if you’re using chrome.

This is what it looks like:

The only one you’ve got to disable is the “Accelerated 2D Canvas” which you see on top here. You might need to Ctrl+F to find it on the page.