I am having a problem where text in certain apps is invisible in Big Sur Betas 1 and 2. In Outlook, all email text is invisible. In Excel, all cell contents are invisible. In Firefox, all context menu text is invisible. Tried verifying fonts, etc. What is going on here?
Invisible Text In Big Sur
Same problem with Outlook. Tried resetting all fonts, clearing caches. In Font Book, Arial Regular and some other Regular font variants don't show up.
Depending on the situation, it might be that the text is accidentally the same color as its background, hasn't been rendered in the right place (clipping), or is suffering from some kind of compositing problem. Is the text selectable?
Yes, the text is selectable and copy/pastable...I have been pasting into TextEdit in order to read emails. Since I originally posted, I've also noticed it happens in the Mail app, but only when composing a new message - reading received messages is fine.
Has anyone resolved this problem? I'm having exactly the same issue after upgrading to Big Sur beta. Tried reinstalling Office, resetting fonts, nothing works. For example in email I don't see the text unless I click "reply" (the text of the original mail is the visible in the new reply window). In excel I don't see the cell contents unless I select everything and change a font of all cells - Calibri, Arial, many other don't work. Lucida Grande does work.
I've the same issues with MS Outlook and Office after upgrading to Big Sur beta. The text becomes invisible on random lines in random order. It's a big bug of Big Sur.
Also when I open a PDF-file using native Preview App some fragments are displayed as black rectangles.
Plus my MacBook Air (late 2018) today was completely frozen several times when surfing through Safari. It seems like Big Sur requires very big part of RAM, and it is incompatible with a computer that only has 8 GB of memory.
I guess I'll have to go back to the Catalina OS...
Also when I open a PDF-file using native Preview App some fragments are displayed as black rectangles.
Plus my MacBook Air (late 2018) today was completely frozen several times when surfing through Safari. It seems like Big Sur requires very big part of RAM, and it is incompatible with a computer that only has 8 GB of memory.
I guess I'll have to go back to the Catalina OS...
Same here. It appears all the Microsoft Office fonts are disabled (despite attempting to reinstall them, verify them, etc.)
In addition (as others have pointed out), a lot of text in edit boxes is not visible, which makes it very difficult to (for example) update formulas in Excel, enter search terms in various applications, etc.
Surprised this is not getting more publicity - the same things were working perfectly in Catalina, and it's a pretty big bug to still be present in Beta 5.
In addition (as others have pointed out), a lot of text in edit boxes is not visible, which makes it very difficult to (for example) update formulas in Excel, enter search terms in various applications, etc.
Surprised this is not getting more publicity - the same things were working perfectly in Catalina, and it's a pretty big bug to still be present in Beta 5.
Same symptoms per thread in MS Outlook.
But then new email in mail.app, change the text to Arial and it vanishes -- still selectable, but not visible. Regardless of dark-mode, size of side bars, screen resolution etc. Completely reproducable.
But then new email in mail.app, change the text to Arial and it vanishes -- still selectable, but not visible. Regardless of dark-mode, size of side bars, screen resolution etc. Completely reproducable.
Same issue here. I can only see the URLs as a blue line and it seems to be clickable. I also tried to reset the fonts, changed size and everything that has to do with fonts but still nothing. This is very annoying.
Has anyone resolved this issue? I was hoping it would be resolved in B7 but no luck.
Numbers document with text in Arial - blank cells. Pages document with Arial - visible. Mail.app new message with Arial - blank text. All reliably consistent.
... and I haven't found a work-around, or many other people with the problem.
... and I haven't found a work-around, or many other people with the problem.
I am working directly with MS Office MAC support and have sent multiple sysdiagnose files and samples to both Apple and MS for this issue. They are aware it exist but no fix or workaround yet. It has to do with rendering of MS specific fonts that are embedded into the Office apps. The support tech I am working with has been able to reproduce the same issue on his own machine and test machine. If I get an update I will post here first.
It is probably Apple system font problem. How to reproduce/check?
Open "Font Book", select all fonts, then Arial, then Normal.
Result:
There is no font preview on the right pane of Font Book.
When you select other font style (i.e. Italic) preview is visible.
I've tried restoring original fonts (from File menu) but Arial/Normal is still missing. Same with Calibri, but in this case there is no Calibri on the list!
Open "Font Book", select all fonts, then Arial, then Normal.
Result:
There is no font preview on the right pane of Font Book.
When you select other font style (i.e. Italic) preview is visible.
I've tried restoring original fonts (from File menu) but Arial/Normal is still missing. Same with Calibri, but in this case there is no Calibri on the list!
OK, I've found the reason (and temporary solution!).
It's because of LCD Font Smoothing enabled (CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled option in terminal)
2. To repair disable setting (set to 1)
defaults write -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled -bool YES
Then restart applications with font problems and voila, Arial is visible now.
It's because of LCD Font Smoothing enabled (CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled option in terminal)
If you have Arial problems check current settings (it will be 0):
2. To repair disable setting (set to 1)
defaults write -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled -bool YES
Then restart applications with font problems and voila, Arial is visible now.
I'm still seeing this (it's actually worse) and the font smoothing fix doesn't work. Any other ideas?
Any luck solving this? I am seeing the same on Unity and Zoom. I am on Beta 9.
Thanks a lot in advance!
Thanks a lot in advance!
I just downloaded Big Sur on Thursday. I was using Microsoft word and parts of my paragraph would just turn white. I could change it back to black but the issue wasn’t resolved. Not sure if it’s the same thing but it is highly annoying. Help?
Big Sur update, some text files open as blank files in Text Edit. From both Recents and Open. If I access the file directly from Finder I can see the text and it opens ok in Text Edit. I had moved the Relocated Items folder to Trash. Moved it back to desktop, same thing.
It is definitely the font choice. My file used Avenir and once I changed it to anything else and saved it, no problem.
found this and it worked fine: forums.macrumors.com/threads/any-way-to-disable-font-smoothing-in-big-sur.2267601/
I'm having the same issue with Helvetica/Arial in Outlook 365 on my iMac. More often than not, instead of text being invisible the characters will appear as boxes with question marks in them. It only affects text that is formatted to be Helvetica, Arial, or Sans-Serif with normal styling (bold and italic are not affected). The problem only affects emails I receive in Outlook as far as I can tell - if I open an HTML email in my web browser the text shows up fine. Thanks to another suggestion in this thread I discovered the workaround that I can read the garbled text by clicking the reply button. Kind of a pain, but at least it allows me to function. I really hope Apple fixes this soon.