How to disable/enable font smoothing in macOS Monterey

It's not clear why, but the good news is that you can still enable or disable font smoothing right from the Terminal. Sure there will be some inconvenience but the process is not too complicated in general. Find out below.

How to disable/enable font smoothing in macOS Monterey Picture 1

Disable/enable font smoothing in macOS Monterey

Step 1. Launch Spotlight search by pressing Command + Space key combination.

Step 2. Enter the keyword 'Terminal' and press the Return key.

Step 3. To disable font smoothing, simply copy and paste the following command into Terminal and press the Return key:

defaults -currentHost write -g AppleFontSmoothing -int 0

Once done, restart your Mac by clicking the Apple icon in the menu bar, then clicking Restart.

If you want to re-enable font smoothing, copy and paste the following command into Terminal and press the Return key:

defaults -currentHost write -g AppleFontSmoothing -int 3

Once done, restart your Mac by clicking the Apple icon in the menu bar and then clicking Restart.

It's all simply that. The process isn't generally inconvenient, except that you'll have to restart your Mac every time you want to apply a change.

Marvin Fry

Update 29 April 2022