Microsoft has published a new build of Chromium Edge (Canary),
with the biggest change being support for improved font
rendering on Windows 10. The new technology should make font
rendering much better for Microsoft Edge users on all versions
of Windows 10, such as the May 2021 Update and October 2020
Update.
Microsoft Edge is apparently getting support for
Windows 10’s built-in ClearType Tuner, a feature that lets
you configure font smoothing settings and get sharper texts.
For those unaware, the ClearType Text Tuner tool allows users
to adjust font smoothing and the settings apply to nearly all
native apps.
Microsoft Edge will also respect the font settings configured
natively on Windows 10. As a result, you can expect the browser
to render fonts with better contrast and gamma correction. This
feature will finally allow the browser to match the clarity of
other Windows 10 apps.
Currently, Chromium-based browser utilizes DirectWrite for
improved font rendering, but the browsers still handle their
own text shaping for the most part and results don’t always
match or respect the Windows apps text rendering. For example,
Chromium fonts are subtly lighter than Windows’ system
defaults.
For legacy Edge, Microsoft used a different approach that
allowed the browser to respect system-wide font settings
on Windows 10.
Microsoft is finally planning to return to legacy’s Edge font
rendering approach and Chromium Edge will soon feature improved
contrast enhancement and gamma correction.
The changes are already live in Microsoft Edge Canary and users
can enable the “Enhance text contrast” mode by following these
steps:
- Visit Edge://flags menu.
- Enable the flag “Enhance text contrast”
- Relaunch browser.
After enabling the experimental flag, you can also launch
ClearType Tuner to configure the advanced settings.
While a precise release date has not yet been announced for the
stable channel, Microsoft is currently planning to introduce
the improved font rendering gradually with Edge 92+. The
feature will be rolled out gradually and some users will
probably get the feature sooner than others. If you can’t wait,
however, can test it manually by enabling the flag.
These changes are currently exclusive to Edge, but Microsoft
will bring them to Chromium so all Chromium-based browsers like
Chrome will have support for consistent font rendering.
