Overlooked new feature: Font Optical Sizing

[tornado99]

Can anyone comment on the difference in font rendering in the interface/applications between Big Sur and Catalina, especially on non-Retina external monitors?

Apple have introduced Optical Sizing in macOS 11 which should have quite a nice impact in this area. People were complaining that the removed RGB sub-pixel antialiasing in Catalina so that font rendering was terrible on non-retina monitors, so perhaps this is one way to compensate for that?

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/macos/visual-design/typography/

https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/66815/whats-with-size-specific-fonts

 

[rumormiller]

I haven't noticed any differences in rendering on my iMac 21.5" 1080p. Nor are there any new options that I can see in System Preferences.

However I always enable HiDPI Mode on non-retina monitors.

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist DisplayResolutionEnabled -bool true

so I can run at 1280 x 720 HiDPI resolution on my 1920x1080 21.5" iMac. I enable this resolution with Retina display manager. https://github.com/avibrazil/RDM

Which looks great to my eyes whereas non HiDPI is unusable for me.

 

[tornado99]

ok thanks. I probably wouldn't expect to see any change for HiDPI monitors, or HiDPI mode as the pixel doubling makes the fonts sharp in the first place.

the sad thing on Catalina is that because of the removal of RGB sub pixel antialiasing, my dual-boot Linux desktop looks sharper on my 1440p external monitor.