JetBrains Mono font rendering issues on Ubuntu 24

I just wanted to report an issue with the default JetBrains Mono font using Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on a 1440p monitor.  The font glyph textures are generating with holes and erratic colors in some characters when using the default font (tested at sizes 12, 13 and 14) and looks horrible in the editor.  Switching to Ubuntu Mono results in significantly improved readability.  The worst offenders in the example below are the letter ‘n’ in the size 13 and the letters ‘o’, ‘O’ and ‘u’ in the size 12.  I'm using both an AMD CPU and GPU if that matters.

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14 comments
Hi,

What option do you use in `File | Settings | Appearance & Behavior | Appearance | Antialiasing`?
Is it use `Subpixel` there? Please try `Subpixel` and `Greyscale` option and restart the IDE.

Would it help?
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Hi Lejia,

I had “Subpixel” set previously.  Changing both the IDE and Editor antialiasing to Greyscale and restarting the editor appears to get rid of the font rendering issues with the JetBrains Mono font.

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By default, it used the `Subpixel` setting there, but the font rendering works fine on Linux with that option. I use the Linux version daily with an Intel CPU and Amd GPU and don't see this rendering issue.

Could you please get the logs from `Help | Collect Logs and Diagnostic Data`, upload it into https://uploads.jetbrains.com/, share us the upload id so we could check the log?
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Changing the antialiasing settings back to Subpixel from Greyscale, ensuring font is still set to JetBrains Mono and restarting the IDE again I don't see any font rendering issues anymore.

Possibly an issue with simply turning it off and back on again?  The only thing I did between making this post and your response was install GNOME Tweaks and changed the preferred OS fonts and hinting, but I assume that shouldn't affect the font settings in Rider.

I'll keep playing with the settings and I'll generate the logs if I see the font corruption issues show up again.

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Ok so there is some inconsistency.  I started Rider this morning and had the font issues again immediately with the Jetbrains Mono and Subpixel.  I changed nothing and restarted the IDE and the font is fine.  I tried a few more IDE restarts without issue.

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Thanks for your updates.

Your issue looks odd.
If you see this issue again, would you mind sharing the log mentioned in my previous reply?
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Started Rider right after booting my computer this morning and font issues again on different letters.  Logs uploaded:

Upload id: 2025_05_26_5bXUCJV3MsDuwaVGhc3d63 (file: rider-logs-20250526-07565612655869161889733641.zip)

This is the font glyph table that was generated with different issues than before.  ‘B’, ‘V’ and ‘Y’ have the most issues.  Also I restarted Rider after generating the logs and different characters have issues. 

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One other thing I noticed is that JetBrains Mono isn't the only font with issues I see in Rider.  Scrolling through the list of fonts, I see problems on multiple others like Noto Sans CJK JP and every “Noto Serif” font.  Note that I saw this after restarting Rider so the logs I uploaded might not show anything with those fonts either.

I'm not sure if it's related, but I did install GNOME Tweaks because the system fonts in Ubuntu 24.04 have problems for me as well.  I found a somewhat related post with others complaining about fonts on Ubuntu 24 vs 22: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1511954/font-rendering-issue-antialiasing

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Thanks for sharing the logs.
But unfortunately, I don't see any clues from it.

Does it help to fix your issue if you click the IDE main menu `Help | Edit Custom VM Options`, add -Dawt.toolkit.name=WLToolkit in a new line and restart it?
If it doesn't help, please remove it.
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Thanks for sharing the logs.
But unfortunately, I don't see any clues from it.

Does it help to fix your issue if you click the IDE main menu `Help | Edit Custom VM Options`, add -Dawt.toolkit.name=WLToolkit in a new line and restart it?
If it doesn't help, please remove it.
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I added the setting and rebooted my machine, launched and restarted Rider a few times and do not see any font problems with JetBrains Mono or any other font when looking at the glyph tables.

Should I remove that setting and use a font that doesn't have issues or stick with that on for now?  Does it impact any sort of performance or anything?

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If it helps, there is no need to remove it. You could use the JetBrains Mono for it.

That option enables native Wayland mode in the IDE, which can help make the UI/font rendering better. Though this mode may contain some subtle bugs, but we are working to improve it.
See here for details: https://blog.jetbrains.com/platform/2024/07/wayland-support-preview-in-2024-2/
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Interesting, this works around some other bugs I've seen while using Rider - namely not being able to use the mouse when hitting a breakpoint during a mouse click event in Unreal.  There certainly are some other issues with Wayland here, but I'll try it out for a while.

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Thanks for the updates! Ubuntu uses Wayland by default, so using Wayland mode for Rider can indeed help in some cases.

If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to ask.
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