ThinStrokes

ThinStrokes is an Xcode plugin that forces text to draw using “Thin Strokes” as applied in iTerm 2 for retina displays.

How does it work?

In a nutshell, the NSLayoutManager class is swizzled to force drawing with an undocumented smoothing mode, as done by iTerm in the following code:

https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2/blob/76fe643f505eb3a0eed5a8390c39325e3c22d179/sources/iTermTextDrawingHelper.m#L681

This is probably a horrible idea, but it’s way easier on the eyes! Bask in all its crisp glory!

Installing ThinStrokes

Again, this is a horrible idea, so if stuff starts breaking randomly, don’t say I didn’t warn you…

The easy way

Install Alcatraz, search for ‘ThinStrokes’, and hit the install button!.

The (slightly) less easy way

Clone this repo, update the submodule, and build the project using xcodebuild -configuration Release at the Terminal, or use the ‘Build for Profiling’ action in Xcode to get a release build.

The output is built directly in Xcode’s plugins folder.