Microsoft improves the readability of Chrome on Windows

Microsoft has long been a supporter of open-source software and is actively contributing to the development of Chromium. After improving Chrome’s experience on touch devices and speeding up page scrolling, the company is now looking to improve the font rendering of Google’s browser on Windows so that text is as clear and readable as in native applications.

An update to improve font rendering on Chrome

In 2021, Microsoft updated Edge to improve font rendering and introduced the Windows ClearType Tuner. These changes enabled Edge to offer a text display experience similar to that of native Windows applications. Now, Microsoft is also bringing these improvements to all Chromium-based browsers, including Chrome.

According to reports from Windows Latest, Microsoft recently published a Chrome Status document confirming the integration of Windows ClearType Text Tuner in Chrome. The feature, titled “Windows ClearType Text Tuner Integration,” aims to ensure that Windows native text rendering preferences are respected on Windows devices.

Chrome font rendering improvements in version 124 thanks to Microsoft

For some time now, some people with certain display configurations have noticed that website fonts look blurry or too thin when using Chrome, making it difficult to read. Other browsers, such as Firefox and Microsoft Edge, do not have this problem and offer better text rendering.

In an old Chromium thread, a user stated that looking at blurry text for a long time on Google Chrome can even cause headaches. This happens because Chrome does not respect Windows native font rendering. By default, native Windows apps use different contrast and gamma settings for text rendering via DirectWrite, a native text rendering API. Chromium also uses DirectWrite, but Google’s implementation is limited to certain tasks, such as font identification.

Google relies on the Skia graphics library, which is a good choice for cross-platform font rendering and does its job. This means that Google handles the creation and rendering of text on all platforms. However, this approach results in a noticeable difference in text rendering on Windows compared to other applications.

Microsoft has been trying to address these issues for some time. In 2021, it released an update for Edge that enabled the browser to support ClearType Windows font rendering.

Microsoft brings ClearType to Chrome despite Skia limitations

While “full support” for ClearType is not possible on Chrome because it uses Skia for text rendering, Microsoft has made several changes to apply ClearType Tuner values to Google Chrome’s text rendering. This brings Chrome’s font rendering closer to that offered by ClearType with Skia’s text rendering backend.

“It is not possible to provide full support for ClearType in Chrome because of the use of Skia for text rendering,” said a Microsoft representative. “However, the latest version of Chrome Canary will apply ClearType Tuner values on Windows and map them to Skia text rendering, which represents the closest support for ClearType possible at this time.” These improvements are now active in Chrome Canary for Windows 11/10 by default and may be implemented in version 124 for the general public.