Turning off text anti-aliasing with NetBeans 8.2, 8.1, 7.3, 7.2, 7.1 on OS X

Update 2016/09/19: For NetBeans 8.1 or 8.2, just add ” -J-Dorg.netbeans.editor.aa.text=false” to the line described below.

Update 2013/02/10: This also works with NetBeans 7.3.

Update 2012/07/24: This post was originally written about 7.1. Everything here also applies to Netbeans 7.2, so I’ve update this to refer to 7.2.

Another version of NetBeans, another hack to get it to turn off text anti-aliasing. Previously, I showed how with NetBeans 7.0. NetBeans 7.3.x is nearly the same, but a bit simpler.

Just make the following changes to the definition of netbeans_default_options in /Applications/NetBeans/NetBeans\ 7.3.app/Contents/Resources/NetBeans/etc/netbeans.conf (or something similar if you didn’t install it in the default location):

Add:

-J-Dswing.aatext=false

Change:

-J-Dapple.awt.graphics.UseQuartz=false

Restart NetBeans and you should have non-anti-aliased fonts.

Notes

Note that, unlike NetBeans 7.0, you no longer need to add -J-Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=off.

See some notes about text anti-aliasing on the NetBeans wiki.

Turning off text anti-aliasing with NetBeans 7.0 on OS X

See the updated post for NetBeans 7.1 and 7.2.

The quick version

For those who want to turn off text anti-aliasing in NetBeans 7.0.x on Mac OS X without reading my tirades, just make the following changes to the definition of netbeans_default_options in /Applications/NetBeans/NetBeans\ 7.0.app/Contents/Resources/NetBeans/etc/netbeans.conf (or something similar if you didn’t install it in the default location):

Add:

-J-Dswing.aatext=false -J-Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=off 

Change:

-J-Dapple.awt.graphics.UseQuartz=false

Restart NetBeans and you should have non-anti-aliased fonts.

The full story

The perfect programming font: many have searched; few have found.

It’s Monaco, 10pt, no anti-aliasing.

But I digress. My goal here is not to discuss fonts (but seriously, I love discussing fonts), but to write the most keyword-heavy post for those trying to figure out how to turn off text anti-aliasing in NetBeans 7 on Mac OS X. By default, NetBeans uses anti-aliasing for its editor, which, for most fonts, is great, but not for Monaco 10pt.

When I used NetBeans 6.x, I found this page to be quite useful. However, when I tried turning off anti-aliasing with NetBeans 7.0, it did not work.

After a bit of exploring, I found the key to be setting -J-Dapple.awt.graphics.UseQuartz=false. I believe Quartz refers to the 2D graphics rendering API for OS X, but for the sake of your non-anti-aliased font, you certainly don’t need it.

In-Application Setting

NetBeans has been well aware of the issue for quite some time, so don’t expect the anti-aliasing setting to be modifiable inside the application any time soon.