If you’re a Chrome user and you find that the Google Chrome font looks off on the browser’s interface and any websites you open in it, there are several causes for this. Some users who installed Google Chrome Canary have raised concerns over this same problem in Windows computers, and it can be surprising especially if you don’t experience the same thing in Chrome Stable on the same computer.
Chrome’s font rendering can be bad under specific situations, and the font ends up looking particularly bad, or worse off, on other internal pages in the browser.
Chrome Canary is the browser’s cutting edge version and when the font looks off, it could be that Google made tweaks in Canary that weren’t applied to Chrome Stable too.
However, the issue could also be as a result of the computer’s installed drivers or hardware, and not necessarily a general issue that could be affecting all installations of Chrome Canary.
From checking across the web, we found all sorts of suggestions on how to resolve this issue, some going as far back as Chrome 3. These include disabling ClearType or running Chrome with different startup parameters, installing advanced font settings, and changing DirectWrite on chrome://flags.
None of these suggestions fixed the chop as many of them worked back in those days, so they’re not applicable to the more recent versions of Google Chrome.
We did however find a solution to the Google Chrome font looks off issue in Chrome as detailed below.
What to do when Google Chrome font looks off
This applies to users of Google Chrome Canary version. Take the steps below when you find Google Chrome font looking off on your browser:
- Open chrome://settings in your browser’s address bar. You can also select Menu and tap Settings
- Click Advanced at the bottom of the page
- Scroll down and find System section
- Toggle off the Use hardware acceleration when available feature
- Restart Google Chrome
That’s it. These steps should help you resolve the Google font rendering problem. Some tasks that benefit from hardware acceleration may be affected when you disable the feature. You can decide whether to keep it enabled or if you find better text rendering for Chrome, you can use it too.
These changes can be undone any time by repeating the steps above and toggle on the hardware accelerating feature.
Were you able to resolve the font rendering issue in Chrome using this solution? Tell us in the comments section below.
Elsie is a tech writer with 8+ years professional experience. For Tech News Watch, she brings rich experience contributing to topics such as Windows, MacOS, Android, and iOS among others. In her spare time, she loves checking out the latest tech trends, gadgets, and news, listening to music and cars.
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