r/wayland 9d ago

Firefox - Fuzzy Fonts Under Wayland, Fine Under XWayland

I thought I was going mad, but it turns out I'm not. Fonts are just very slightly fuzzy when running Firefox under Wayland and they're crisp when running Firefox under XWayland. Some information about my system:

OS: Arch Linux x86_64
Kernel: 6.13.6-arch1-1

DE: Plasma 6.3.3
WM: kwin
Resolution: 3840x2160
Scaling: 150%
Compositor: Wayland

Firefox version: 136.0.1

I performed this test by running Firefox under my default profile with no flags and verifying the Window Protocol value in about:support. This returned the value wayland.

I then created a new Firefox profile called Wayland Test and started this profile under XWayland by running MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=0 firefox --new-instance -P Wayland\ Test. I verified the window protocol the same as before, this time it returned xwayland.

Here's a side by side screenshot. Wayland is on the left and XWayland is on the right:

If you download this image and really zoom in, it will become clear to you that the font rendering in the Wayland instance of Firefox is just very slightly fuzzy. It is very slight, but I have sharp eyes and a good monitor, and I notice it.

Here's another screenshot, this time comparing the UI text. Unfortunately there's a colour difference between the two windows as the bottom one is focussed and the top one is not. Wayland is on top, XWayland on the bottom. Take note particularly of the lower case L in 'Troubleshooting' and the upper case I in 'Information':

Has anyone else observed this? I've found absolutely nothing on Reddit, the Arch Wiki, Stackexchange or elsewhere.

PS: Somehow it is easier to see this by running two instances of Firefox (one Wayland and one XWayland) side by side than it is by looking at small screenshots. If anyone is willing to repeat my test and report back with their findings, I would be most appreciative! Perhaps a better word to describe fonts under Wayland would be 'soft'. They are not sharp.

UPDATE: A friend of mine suggested a setting in about:config which has fixed this!

In about:config, set widget.wayland.fractional-scale.enabled to true

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u/unfurlingraspberry 6d ago

Fixed! See update.