[Bug] Text on Websites blurry

[AnTheMaker]

What happened?

Hey there! First of all - great job with Zen! It looks and feels amazing, like a younger sibling of Firefox! I'm using it on Linux (Zorin OS 17), and it seems like the text on pretty much all websites is a bit blurry when browsing. Sometimes it gets more sharp when scrolling, but it's overall super weird. Would be awesome if you could look into this! Keep up the great work! ~ An

Reproducible?

• [X] I have checked that this issue cannot be reproduced on Mozilla Firefox.

Version

1.0.0-a.26

Severity impact

High

What platform are you seeing the problem on?

Linux

Relevant log output

No response

[AnTheMaker]

Sorry, selected the wrong severity label but can't seem to change it 😬

Also, it seems like setting layout.paint_rects_separately to true in about:config seems to make this issue occur less often... super strange - I don't have this issue on the same machine with stock Firefox.

[nocanoa]

Can u share some screenshots?

[gunir]

Sorry, selected the wrong severity label but can't seem to change it 😬

Also, it seems like setting layout.paint_rects_separately to true in about:config seems to make this issue occur less often... super strange - I don't have this issue on the same machine with stock Firefox.

Try to disable above config and set:

• gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.rendering_mode to 0
• gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.gamma to -1

And let me know if this fix your issue.

[camflan]

I have the same issue on macOS and none of the config changes have improved the situation. This (Zen) is only browser I have installed that has this behavior, including Firefox

[nocanoa]

@camflan can u create a new user profile and check if it also looks like that

[n7itro]

Zen uses different font rendering preferences by default. Can you try setting gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.rendering_mode to -1 or 2

Also, can someone provide an example screenshot

[camflan]

This is what it looks like on a brand new user profile.

It's weird. You can see in the last 2 where I've moved my mouse over some areas of the screen and they've sharpened up. Specifically if you look around the Tabs > "Ctrl+Tab" text

[camflan]

I've set these settings and I think it's improved. I'm still seeing random text that's fuzzy, but now most sites are rendered as expected,

[mr-cheffy]

did you restart?

[camflan]

did you restart?

After setting the flags? Yes, several times

[octoxan]

The

Sorry, selected the wrong severity label but can't seem to change it 😬 Also, it seems like setting layout.paint_rects_separately to true in about:config seems to make this issue occur less often... super strange - I don't have this issue on the same machine with stock Firefox.

Try to disable above config and set:

• gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.rendering_mode to 0
• gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.gamma to -1

And let me know if this fix your issue.

These settings fixed it for me on macOS I think.

This is what I was seeing in Zen vs Firefox btw, both on DuckDuckGo.

Firefox:

Zen:

[gunir]

Will be fixed next update.

[mr-cheffy]

^^^ This will be fixed! 👍🏽

[tilupe]

I still have this problem, even though I set the specified settings and restarted zen

[mstcl]

Really enjoying Zen so far, sadly the font rendering is still not fixed on Linux (version 1.0.0.a.29-1, after the patch).

Left is Zen. Right is Firefox.

I've done the following and restarted but it still persists:

• gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.rendering_mode to 0
• gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.gamma to -1
• layout.paint_rects_separately to true

[rdvansloten]

Also occurring on the latest Windows build 1.0.0-a.34. Making changes to the about:config settings listed above makes no discernible difference.

[EigoOda]

I'm using 1.0.0-a.35 (64-bit), but it didn't look fix yet.

[m-j-r]

Hi everyone who is having this problem - I upgraded to 1.0.0-a.39 (64-bit), but was still experiencing this issue, and could not find a fix.

I saw this though, from @NOCanoa:

@camflan can u create a new user profile and check if it also looks like that

And creating a new profile finally resolved the problem - old profile still has the issue.

[tilupe]

I think this problem is continued in this issue https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop/issues/440

[m-j-r]

Ok, I was wrong 🙈 New profile is also not fixed.

Easiest place to see it is in the about:profiles screen

[Evthestrike]

I'm also getting this issue on a 4k monitor. Very annoying

[azinsharaf]

i am also getting it on a oled monitor. 1.0.1-a.19 (Firefox 132.0.1) (64-bit)

blurry screen:

[rdvansloten]

It was fixed for a few updates but it's back since about 1-2 weeks. What happened

[FujiwaraChoki]

Getting same issue.

[FujiwaraChoki]

Any updates here? This issue is incredibly annoying...

[Sypheos]

This https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop/issues/2671#issuecomment-2529781863 fixed it for me

[shiedltv61]

I am having the same issue on the latest version on fedora 42. Windows is 100%, did we have any solution?

Sorry I haven`t checked the the https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop/issues/2671#issuecomment-2529781863 solution