Microsoft has introduced modifications to Chromium aimed at improving the display of text in the browser. After numerous complaints over the years, version 124 of Chrome will now include support for contrast and gamma adjustments from Windows ClearType Text Tuner, thus improving text rendering in Google’s browser. Chromium will render text more nicely, with increased contrast and gamma correction.

According to the Chrome Platform Status webpage, the lack of custom text rendering settings has been an issue that users have been mentioning since 2015. With Microsoft’s intervention, Chrome will finally be more user-friendly.

Some time ago, Microsoft made changes to text rendering in Edge, and the main goal was to achieve nicer fonts, with improved range and contrast. Thanks to the ClearType Text Tuner settings in Windows that Edge uses, the browser has changed its look to a much better one, and the text has become easily readable.

Microsoft’s ClearType font technology has long been used in Windows to improve the display of text on screens, with the goal of making text look like it’s printed on a piece of paper.

Microsoft engineers have integrated ClearType Text Tuner support into Chrome so that it picks up any changes in contrast and gamut, just like most other Windows apps.

Curt Cathy-Schmidt, a senior software development engineer at Microsoft, is leading the effort in this area. In recent months, he has been involved in improving the text image in Chromium-based browsers, with a focus on improving accessibility in Edge and Chrome.

More than five years ago, the company switched to Chromium in its own Edge browser. At the time, Microsoft announced that it would “bring our Windows platform expertise to improve the performance of all Chromium-based browsers on Windows,” and that promise was kept. Microsoft contributed to improving scrolling in Chrome and many other features.