Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Cuireadh an snáithe seo sa chartlann. Cuir ceist nua má tá cabhair uait.

Why does some text/font in my browser look like this?

more options

On a few different websites, the text looks like this and makes it very hard to read. The same websites in other browsers don't have this same problem.

On a few different websites, the text looks like this and makes it very hard to read. The same websites in other browsers don't have this same problem.
Attached screenshots

All Replies (2)

more options

This is a problem with a corrupted font that Firefox replaces with another font that shows outlined characters.

You can right-click and select "Inspect Element" to open the builtin Inspector with this element selected.

You can check in the Rules tab in the right panel in the Inspector what font-family is used for selected text. You can check in the Font tab in the right panel in the Inspector what font is actually used because Firefox might be using a different font than specified by the website.

more options

Here's another thing you could check:

In some past threads, the "outline" appearance was caused by installing the "Helvetica Neue" font. For some reason, it looks terrible in Firefox for Windows even though it looks fine in Firefox on Mac.

For example: https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1292663

If you don't need this font, you can remove it through the Windows Fonts control panel.

If you do need this font, you can set up an override in Firefox using either an add-on or an optional userContent.css file to replace it with Arial instead.

For example: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/cdp5ll/trouble_with_font_on_some_websites_after_checking/etvgc88/