External 2K monitor looks blurry on Mac — text is soft no matter how you adjust the resolution
You plug in your 2560×1440 monitor and it looks noticeably worse than your MacBook screen. Text edges are soft and fuzzy. You try lowering the resolution and it gets worse. You set it to native and everything's sharp but tiny. There's no sweet spot.
Why does this happen?
A 2560×1440 monitor is the awkward middle ground — too low-res for clean 2× HiDPI scaling, too high-res to look good at non-HiDPI. macOS defaults to rendering it without HiDPI, which looks noticeably softer compared to Retina.
How to fix it
Install BetterDisplay (free or paid) — the most reliable solution for enabling HiDPI on 2K external displays.
In BetterDisplay, create a virtual screen with HiDPI enabled for your monitor.
Alternatively, in System Settings → Displays, try Default for display first, then experiment with scaled options.
Discussion
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