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Stop the Mac's terminal text from looking heavy - #40
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On Mac Catalyst, Latin text and PingFang Chinese drew visibly heavier than in Ghostty or other terminals using the same JetBrains Mono. libghostty-spm's base configuration sets `font-thicken = true`, which makes ghostty turn on CoreText font smoothing for every glyph; ghostty's own default is false. The app's overlay never said otherwise, so the Mac inherited it. Turn it off on Catalyst only; iOS is left as it was, since the smoothing was not compared there.
This was referenced Oct 30, 2026
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On Mac, Latin text and PingFang Chinese draw visibly heavier than in Ghostty or other terminals using the same JetBrains Mono; the Chinese in particular reads like Linux rendering.
TerminalConfiguration.defaultcallswithFontThicken(true), so every generated config starts withfont-thicken = true. Ghostty's own default isfalse.setShouldSmoothFontsinfont/face/coretext.zig), which is macOS's stroke dilation.This sets
font-thicken = falsein the Catalyst branch ofGhosttyAppConfiguration.terminal, after the library's base so it wins. iOS is untouched: I did not compare the smoothing there, so its binary is unchanged.Before / after
The same text in JetBrains Mono and PingFang SC, 14 pt at 2x, rasterised with the CoreText settings ghostty uses for a glyph (gray alpha-only bitmap, font smoothing =
font-thicken). Smoothing on lays down 33% more ink for these lines.font-thicken = true(before)font-thicken = false(after)These are renders of the glyph path, not screenshots of the app window; the app's Metal blending is not in them.
Checked
font-thicken = falseunder Settings ▸ Ghostty Configuration on a Mac and opening a new tab made the text render normally.Not checked
If you would rather change the default in libghostty-spm so every consumer gets it, this overlay line can simply go.