Weird little thing I noticed. Probably a macOS bug but... just in case

[luckman212]

Saw this today, while starting to type a time into Alfred.... made a short recording

 

Keep your eye on that : colon ...

 

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1992842/129944232-f1a889a9-5e9e-4e17-a694-f6d50c711a5f.mp4

[luckman212]

• macOS 11.5.2
• Alfred 4.5.1.1256

[Andrew]

@luckman212 hah how weird... looks like Spotlight does this too. I wonder if there is a reason macOS does this, or if it's a text rendering bug?

[luckman212]

Oh wow. Didn't even think of testing Spotlight, but yeah— lo and behold, same thing. Strange one indeed. Thanks for looking, guess we'll see if macOS 12 changes anything.

[vitor]

That doesn’t look like a macOS bug, but a font feature (ligatures). A colon between numbers is dividing time, not expanding on an idea like a colon in text. It serves a different purpose and looks more balanced when raised between those numbers, which are as tall as capital letters.

 

Try changing the font (to a crummier one which won’t have nice features) or one with text figures. Do you still see the behaviour?

 

If not, what it means is that the font you’re using has a special attention to detail.

Edited August 19, 2021 by vitor

[luckman212]

Nice info @vitor — and you're right of course. I switched to a different theme and the dancing colon was gone. Always interesting to learn about obscure features like this.  I suppose it'd be easy to change fonts by duplicating the theme in Alfred, but now that I know why this is happening it doesn't bother me anymore!

 

Reminds me of this funny stand up comedy bit—can't remember who now (Ray Romano?) but goes something like..... "when you start getting older, you might notice a lump one day on one side and start panicking... until you feel the same lump on the other side and breathe a sigh of relief.  Whew!  It's symmetrical. It's supposed to be there!"