Roboto 400 appears bolder than 700 on retina MacBook

Question

The "Roboto" font from Google Fonts appears much bolder at 400 then it does at 700 on my retina MacBook.

I've tried the -webkit-font-smoothing antialiased trick but it didn't seem to work. Is there any way I can fix this? Thank you.

Update: It could very well be a bug on Google's server though I'm not 100% sure. I downloaded the font family and applied the downloaded one to my site and Roboto 400 looks normal now...

Owsley

Really odd behaviour... :/ Can't say I have any clue why but hopefully just a bug on Google's side – Impressionist

I have a retina macbook too and this doesn't happen. Try inspecting the element to see if it's actually 400 font-weight – Hacienda

I have and it is indeed 400. Also I'm having the same problem across all browsers on retina macbook. It looks normal on iOS devices and mac pro but not retina macbook... – Owsley

Answer 1

On some browsers, the font declaration in CSS includes a hint to load the font from the local filesystem (as opposed to downloading over the network). If you had a version of Roboto Normal on your machine at the time, it would have been used.

It's possible that you previously had a corrupt version of Roboto installed. For example, the 400 weight seems to match the 900 weight. Perhaps you installed Roboto Ultra-Bold but it got renamed to Roboto Normal in error.

Cami