Ask: How to Fix Blurry Text on a Mac

Got an Apple, Mac, or iOS tech question? We've got the answer. This time in Ask, we offer solutions on how to fix blurry text when you're using an external monitor on your Mac. 

Question

I’ve just switched from an iMac to a Mac mini, but on the cheaper monitor I'm using — a 27-inch Samsung LCD — the text is blurry and no changes in System Preferences seem to help. I have tried the monitor on a PC and it looks fine. What can I do?

Answer

There are lots of reasons why you might get a blurry image. The two most common are that the monitor is over- or under-scanning (there’ll be an option for this in the monitor’s own menu) and font smoothing (try typing defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 2 in Terminal, then log out and back in; click here for more details).

If your display is blurry, try smoothing fonts or run a script to convince OS X the monitor only supports RGB.

There’s another possibility. Apple’s DisplayPort uses the YCbCr color-encoding scheme by default, and this can look weird on some monitors. You can fix it by running a script to convince OS X the monitor only supports RGB. Right-click and download the script at embdev.net/attachment/168316/patch-edid.rb and then type ruby patch-edid.rb in Terminal. This creates a folder in your home folder. Move the patch-edid.rb into /System/Library/Displays/Overrides and restart your Mac.

Got an Apple tech question? Email ask@maclife.com.