Fonts looking blurry in the new Chrome UI

Sep 7, 2018 08:21 GMT  ·  By

Google Chrome 69 debuted earlier this week as the search giant’s 10th-anniversary release, bringing among others a new user interface with rounded tabs and other refined elements.

But as it turns out, the new look not only that isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but it also creates some rendering issues on a number of systems, particularly on those with high DPI screens.

Basically, fonts appear blurry in the tabs of the new UI due to Google Chrome using a lower contrast configuration that in the previous generation.

The fix

Microsoftie Scott Hanselman was the one to report it on Twitter, providing a few more specifics on the reasons fonts appear blurry for a number of users.

“Hm, just updated to the new Chrome. I dig the new tabs but suddenly the text is light and blurry in the tabs on Retina,” he posted, adding that the same issue is seen on both Windows and Mac.

“The text isn't BLACK. It's gray and then anti-aliased to gray. That means it's lower contrast that before, which makes it harder to read and "feels" blurry,” he continued.

Hanselman has created a dedicated Google Chrome 69 extension that’s supposed to make the text in the new tabs completely black, making it easier to read.

However, there are users claiming that full websites appear to be blurry in Google Chrome 69, and for the time being, no workaround seems to be available, other than downgrading to the previous version of the browser.

While this doesn’t fix the blurry font issues, you can actually return to the classic Google Chrome theme using the guide here. However, it’s most likely just a matter of time until Google blocks this trick, so sooner or later, everybody may be forced to use the new UI.

Google has remained tight-lipped so far on any potential fix for the blurry fonts, but it looks like the company’s latest beta does address the problem already.

Thanks for the tip, Joshua!