Message subject/from uses subpixel (RGB) antialiasing when system antialiasing is grayscale

Bug Reports
1

Description

System antialiasing is set to grayscale (Linux Freetype). Mailspring uses subpixel RGB antialiasing for the message authors and subject in the message list column. the text in the search box in the top bar also uses subpixel antialiasing.
This is actually less sharp than grayscale antialiasing for users of 4K/5K monitors. Would be better to follow system settings or just make everything grayscale.

To Reproduce…

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

Expected Behavior

Screenshots

Setup

Mailspring 1.17.4. Ubuntu 25.10. Linux. Snap.

  • OS and Version:
    • Installation Method:
  • Mailspring Version:

Additional Context

2

Solved

This is a snap specific problem

Making sure antialiasing is grayscale in your font config file and then

sudo cp ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf /etc/fonts/local.conf

solves the problem.

3

Thanks for reporting this - for good measure, Mailspring 1.18.0 removes the subpixel-antialiased font smoothing CSS specification that the app was applying (#2618). This should mean Mailspring will now respect your system’s font rendering settings rather than forcing its own antialiasing mode.

This should resolve the mismatch you were seeing, without needing the fontconfig workaround. Update via snap refresh mailspring, the built-in auto-updater, or from https://www.getmailspring.com/download.

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