Make Windows fonts look as smooth as Mac OS X fonts

Ever wonder why everything just looks a little bit better on a Mac? That’s because Apple OS X uses a different font rendering technology than Windows. That can easily be changed though, and there’s a little program that can do it with ease.

Now before I open up this can of worms, people each have their preference, and we can argue for days about which one is better. Personally, I like the way the OS X looks. GDI++, a Japanese application, does just that. It takes just about 5mb of memory and sits in your task tray, rendering everything on your system in GDI++ instead of ClearType (the typical windows font rendering tool). And when you disable it, it just puts everything back to the way it was. It’s really easy to activate, and gets rid of jaggy fonts. Below is a before and after screenshot taken of craigslist with and without GDI++ enabled:

Before



After



Here are some instructions on how to get this working on your computer:

1. Download GDI++.
2. Extract this ZIP file in any directory, for example:C:\gdi
3. Double-click the file: gditray.exe
4. Now, your task bar you can note a “G”, like the image:



5. Double-click it, it should start glowing green:



6. Enjoy this beautiful font-smoothing.


Originally found at Estevao Mascarenhas.