Better ClearType Tuner

A better way to configure ClearType font smoothing on Windows 10.

Features

Quickly set font-smoothing settings in Windows 10 and know what you are getting, unlike using the broken ClearType tuner that is built-in to the OS. This program includes all font-smoothing settings that I have found to work in modern Windows, and does not expose settings that are non-functional.

• Enable or disable font antialiasing.
• Choose between Grayscale antialiasing or subpixel antialiasing using RGB or BGR subpixel layouts.
• Edit the contrast of font rendering (when using RGB or BGR subpixel antialiasing).
• Edit ClearType Level (0–100): the DirectWrite/WPF “amount of ClearType” registry setting (ClearTypeLevel). 0 is grayscale for those engines; 100 is full ClearType. Useful for apps that honor it (for example Firefox and WPF); many GDI apps and Chromium-based browsers ignore it.
• Preview the results at several font sizes and see a zoomed-in view to better-understand what is going on internally!

Usage

Download from the Releases Section, extract, and run.

The zip contains two builds of the same program. Run whichever one suits your machine, and keep its .config file next to it:

Executable	Requires	Notes
BetterClearTypeTuner.exe	.NET Framework 4.7.2 (offline installer)	Works on Windows 7 SP1 and later. Runs as x86/x64 (under emulation on ARM). Use this one unless you have a reason not to.
BetterClearTypeTuner-ARM64.exe	.NET Framework 4.8.1 (offline installer)	Needs Windows 10 or later, but runs natively on Windows on ARM (24H2+) instead of under x64 emulation. Despite the name it is an AnyCPU build and runs on x86/x64 too.

Caveats

As of Windows 10 1903, several pages of Windows' built-in ClearType tuner have little or no effect on GDI text rendering. This program originally omitted those Avalon.Graphics-only knobs and wrote sane defaults instead. ClearType Level is now exposed because it still affects DirectWrite/WPF (and some browsers); the in-app GDI zoom preview will not change when you adjust it. Other Avalon keys (EnhancedContrastLevel, TextContrastLevel, GrayscaleEnhancedContrastLevel) remain at sane defaults.

There appears to be some level of support for setting different ClearType settings on different monitors. However, this appears to be entirely non-functional in modern Windows, so this program sets all monitors the same.

Sources / further reading

• This project's investigation notes: ClearType Investigations (wiki) — and discussion in #11.
• Microsoft documents per-display WPF/Avalon keys such as PixelStructure under SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Avalon.Graphics\<display> (ClearType Registry Settings — WPF), while GDI font-smoothing orientation is a single SystemParametersInfo value (SPI_*FONTSMOOTHINGORIENTATION) with no monitor handle. DirectWrite can load per-HMONITOR defaults only when apps call CreateMonitorRenderingParams (multi-monitor how-to).
• Independent mapping of what each cttune.exe step writes: Reupen — What does each step in the ClearType Text Tuner do? (2025).
• Longer discussion of ClearType (setting planes, tools, and mixed RGB/BGR desks as a corollary): ClearType · HCI Nerdz topic · essay.

Shout-out to MacType

For those who want more advanced text rendering tweaks, I strongly recommend MacType. MacType enables much deeper customization of text rendering (although it doesn't work with everything) and is particularly useful on displays that use subpixel layouts not natively supported in Windows.