[Fix] Font Looks Bold and Blurry After Upgrading to Chrome 124 or Later

If you upgraded or installed Google Chrome 124 or later version and you feel the fonts look bold and blurry in Chrome toolbars, bookmarks bar and tab bar, this article will help you in fixing the bold font issue and restoring proper fonts in Google Chrome web browser.

Following image shows a comparison of the bold font issue (top) and normal font (bottom) in Google Chrome:

You can see in the above image, the default font in Chrome browser is bold and looks blurry. On the other hand, the bottom part of the image shows perfect normal font restored in Chrome browser.

Actually the new bold font is a part of the new Chrome Refresh 2023 UI which was introduced recently in Chrome web browser. The new bold font is used in the top Chrome components such as tab bar, title bar, address bar, toolbar and bookmarks bar.

The latest Chrome 124.0 and later versions come with additional support for the built-in ClearType text tuner in Windows 10 and Windows 11 operating systems. Now Chrome automatically picks the contrast and gamma values from Windows ClearType Text Tuner setting and applies the same setting to its native Skia text rendering. This change was made to ensure that Chrome respects and follows the user’s text rendering preferences on Windows devices.

Due to this new change, the font or text might start looking blurry and hard to understand in Chrome newer versions. Fortunately, there is a hidden secret preference/flag to disable the new Skia text rendering and restore classic text rendering which automatically fixes bold and blurry font issue in Chrome.

If you also want to get rid of the new bold and blurry fonts and bring back classic fonts in Google Chrome web browser, following steps will help you:

STEP 1. Open Google Chrome web browser and type chrome://flags/ in address bar and press Enter. It’ll open the advanced configuration page.

STEP 2. Now type font in the “Search flags” box.

Look for following option in the results:

STEP 3. Now select Disabled from the drop-down box given next to the above mentioned option.

STEP 4. Google Chrome will ask you to restart the browser. Click on “Relaunch now” button to restart Google Chrome.

That’s it. After restarting Chrome, you’ll get back the normal font in Chrome UI.

PS: In future, if you decide to restore default bold font in Chrome, select “Default” option from the drop-down box for the above mentioned option and restart the browser.

Also Check:

[Fix] Blurry Text and Font Display Problems in Google Chrome

[Fix] Too Much Brightness, Whiteness and Gamma Level in Windows 10 and 11 Display

[DPI Scaling Fix] Bold, Blurry or Hard to Read Font Problem in Windows 8.1 / 10