Change Font Smoothing Settings

Mac OS X 10.6 simplified the font smoothing (anti-aliasing) for Mac OS X and all apps within it, but for some the change is unwelcome. If you feel like your screen looks different, it probably does, and the change can be very profound on certain LCD displays. Using the Terminal we can adjust the font smoothing to the same precision that we could prior to 10.6, so launch the Terminal and enter the following command:

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 2

the 2 on the end is for medium smoothing which used to be called ‘best for flat panel’, 1 is for light smoothing, and 3 is for strong smoothing. After you execute the command you’ll want to reload the Finder and other apps that are open to see the changes in effect, you can reload the Finder by killing it:

killall Finder

Now your font smoothing will be reflected in the settings you chose.

I found this hint on MacWorld, where the author was complaining of the way fonts looked in 10.6 on his Hackintosh Dell Mini 10v, the changes are very profound on smaller screens and the improvement was very nice on my Hackintosh Netbook (an Acer Aspire) as well.

[ via MacWorld ]