[meta issue] 1.40 update: Font/Color rendering degradation (macOS, Linux, Windows)

[KeWang323]

• VSCode Version:
  Version: 1.40.0
  Commit: 86405ea
  Date: 2019-11-06T17:09:34.601Z
  Electron: 6.1.2
  Chrome: 76.0.3809.146
  Node.js: 12.4.0
  V8: 7.6.303.31-electron.0
  OS: Darwin x64 19.0.0
• OS Version: 10.15.1 (19B88)

Steps to Reproduce:

1. open vscode
2. open a file
3. tried solution in macOS Mojave: font rendering is blurry or has changed #51132
4. on non-retina displays
   

[Geobert]

Not only MacOS, colors are dimmed on Windows as well:
Version: 1.40.0 (user setup)
Commit: 86405ea
Date: 2019-11-06T17:02:13.381Z
Electron: 6.1.2
Chrome: 76.0.3809.146
Node.js: 12.4.0
V8: 7.6.303.31-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.18362

1.39.2:

1.40:

[bhughes339]

My setup is identical to @Geobert, I just wanted to add a gif to make the problem more obvious:

EDIT: Updated with better quality gif

[dhowden]

Also seeing this after update to 1.40.0 (running 10.14.6 MacOS Mojave).

Version: 1.40.0
Commit: 86405ea
Date: 2019-11-06T17:09:34.601Z
Electron: 6.1.2
Chrome: 76.0.3809.146
Node.js: 12.4.0
V8: 7.6.303.31-electron.0
OS: Darwin x64 18.7.0

[AAulicino]

I'm having the opposite effect in macOS Mojave 10.14.6.

I had to downgrade to 1.39 because the new font intensity is giving me headaches.

EDIT: Aligned both images in gif

[dhowden]

@AAulicino That looks like an anti-aliasing/font-smoothing change rather than just a colour change.

[KeWang323]

are we able to downgrade it to the previous release?

[AAulicino]

@KeWang323 You can find and download previous versions through the Visual Studio Code updates page.

[deepak1556]

There are two different issues here, for macOS users just to confirm do you have any of the workaround from #59887 that disables the font smoothing ? If so can you undo them to compare ?

For windows users can you report your findings on #82733 , does this only happen with a particular theme ?