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Today Google Chrome 37 got final and well... the fonts looking ugly. It looks unsharp like on most .NET programs. Is there a way to disable DirectWrite and get back to Chrome <= 36 font rendering?

EDIT: To show you what I mean, I took two screenshots of this website:

DirectWrite On:

enter image description here

DirectWrite Off:

enter image description here

As you can see, with DirectWrite activated the vertical lines are sometimes unsharp. Without DirectWrite the vertical lines are mostly sharp and exact on the pixels of the screen.

Michael
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    Although, if this *is* in fact a HiDPI issue as alluded to in the comments, it might be worth mentioning in the question itself. On normal text scaling, everything does look much better where previously, Web fonts especially were practically *unreadable*. – BoltClock Aug 27 '14 at 14:04
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    @BoltClock: No, This problem occurs on normal DPI. On another PC I use display scaling. Didn't try Chrome 37 on this PC yet. – Michael Aug 27 '14 at 14:06
  • Noticed the change this morning and thought something was wrong with my eyes (thanks Google). The letter spacing is definitely different and I'm not liking it. – j08691 Aug 27 '14 at 15:08
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    You could always try calibrating cleartype to what suits you best instead of disabling directwrite. Search for cleartype in the control panel. – Eejin Aug 27 '14 at 15:13
  • See http://superuser.com/questions/803710/chrome-37-ui-got-larger-and-became-blurry-on-125-dpi – DavidPostill Aug 28 '14 at 07:36
  • I calibrated the heck out of ClearType when I set up this machine. But the automatic update to Chrome 37 made everything blurry, ugly, color-fringed, and hard to read. GDI is still the only decent text rendering technology to come out of Redmond. – Cody Gray - on strike Sep 06 '14 at 09:24
  • See also [Chrome's fonts look off](http://superuser.com/questions/821092/chromes-fonts-look-off/1112095#1112095) for Chrome 52+. – Arjan Aug 10 '16 at 17:13

1 Answers1

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In order to disable DirectWrite.

Go to address bar and type chrome://flags/#disable-direct-write. There you will see the option to disable DirectWrite.

enter image description here

Oliver Salzburg
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Kunal
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    I disabled DirectWrite, but the fonts are still unsharp and now the letters even have an uneven distance between them. By the way, I am using 125% DPI in Windows. – Anderson Aug 27 '14 at 12:31
  • A long time ago I noticed problems with Chrome and 150% DPI on Windows 7. I disabled the DPI change for Chrome and had no problems. You can do it in Chromes start menu or desktop link properties. – Michael Aug 27 '14 at 12:47
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    On Chrome 37 x64, the compatibility option for disabling display scaling on high-DPI displays doesn't work anymore. I must have a larger DPI on my computer because my eyes are not so good :) – Anderson Aug 27 '14 at 12:50
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    This is interesting, because 37 fixed the weird font issues most of us have had for YEARS. – patricksweeney Aug 27 '14 at 13:22
  • @Anderson, I disabled display scaling for Chrome and did this: http://googlesystem.blogspot.de/2010/12/change-default-zoom-level-in-google.html All of Chromes buttons stay small but the Website itself gets zoomed. I'm OK with it. – Michael Aug 27 '14 at 14:03
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    Thanks for that! With DirectWrite on it suddently looked like my eyes were extremely tired. VERY unpleasant. – Marco Aug 28 '14 at 16:27
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    I hate negative boolean options. :) – Stephen Chu Oct 15 '14 at 00:31
  • Brilliant! Disabling DirectWrite fixed the sporadic pauses I've suffered in Chrome for the past few months https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=408647 – Colonel Panic Jan 23 '15 at 23:32
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    What do you know; this flag seems to have been removed and I'm back looking at ugly rendering... – Arjan Aug 08 '16 at 06:58
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    Ah, see [this answer](http://superuser.com/questions/821092/chromes-fonts-look-off/1112095#1112095) and Brian's comment about GDI rendering (and hence: this option) having been removed from Chrome for Windows as of version 52. – Arjan Aug 10 '16 at 17:12
  • Since the disable-direct-wire flag has been removed as of Chrome 52, you can use e.g. Cent Browser, which is Chromium-based browser which still supports this flag. – user14967413 May 19 '21 at 21:03