How To Use Mac Screen Zoom

A handy feature built in to your Mac is the ability to zoom in and magnify the part of your screen under the cursor. You can choose to have the entire display show the zoomed area, or frame the zoomed area in a rectangle or along the side of the screen. There are lots of customization options such how to trigger and adjust the zoom area andhow it follows the cursor. You can change the keyboard shortcuts and other features too.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today I'm going to show you how to use screen zoom on your Mac.
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So the zoom option is has been around on Macs for like forever. It's a great option to be able to read hard to see text or focus in on a certain part of the screen for various reasons. There are tons of ways to customize it too. So to turn on Zoom you need to get and check your settings. In System Preferences if you go to Accessibility and then look for Zoom on the left you'll see how you have things currently setup and you can change this.
For instance here I've got the keyboard shortcuts turned on but the trackpad gestures turned off. I can switch between them or have both. I can turn on the trackpad gestures and you can see that I have to use a key, so I'm going to use the default control key there, and when I use Control and go with two fingers up on my trackpad it zooms in.  I can continue to zoom in and see things clearer just continue to hold that Control key down and move my two fingers down and it will zoom back out.
But if I go and use the keyboard shortcuts then I can either use Option Command 8 to turn it on and then the same thing to turn it off. Or I can just use Option Command and then the plus or minus keys, or technically the minus or equal keys, with the Option and Command key. That will start zooming it in in steps and zooming it out in steps.
So that's how you turn it on but it doesn't have to look exactly like you just saw. You can customize how it works. So I don't like it when it shows the entire screen zoomed in like that. I would rather have it where the zoom style is set to picture in picture. So in this case if I were to zoom in I instantly get this square area and it moves with my cursor. I can focus on anything I want. The rest of the screen remains the same. I can customize this. So once I have picture in picture selected and I can click Options. I can set the window position to stationary so it doesn't move with the cursor, have it move with the cursor, or go along the edge. So, for instance, if I do that you can see I get this area here on the edge of the screen.
Furthermore, I can adjust the size and location. So in this case I can adjust the size and location of the part at the edge or even drag it to the other edge of the screen, or the bottom or the top. If I were to go in and change the picture in picture options to follow the mouse cursor and then adjust size and location then it's going to allow me to drag the edges of this window here so I can adjust the size of that and make it as large or small as I want.
There are also a few other options here like the ability to invert colors inside. So now you can see the colors are inverted here. I can Hold some keys like in this case the Control and Option key and it temporarily brings up the Zoom window. I can even detach the Zoom window view from the pointer. 
Now if you change from picture in picture to full screen the options are different here. You get a maximum zoom and a minimum zoom. You can have the screen flash when there's a notification because you maybe zoomed in and not see the notification up here in the upper right hand corner. There's also the option to have the Zoom follow the keyboard focus. So when I turn that on and I go into say Pages and I zoom in, now as I move the cursor the zoomed area will move with it.
So you may notice here under the keyboard shortcuts one of them is Unassigned. It doesn't seem that there's a way you can customize these. But there actually is. If you go into Keyboard, System Preferences, and you go to Shortcuts one of the options is Accessibility and one of the categories under Accessibility is Zoom. You can see those same shortcuts here. So you can actually change these to something else and of course assign this one that doesn't have a keyboard shortcut.
Using the Zoom mode is part of the Accessibility options on your Mac. But it can really be used by everybody. As a developer I often use it to work on screen layouts to get everything just perfect. Designers, I'm sure, use it to be able to zoom into a particular part of an image and work with colors or at the pixel level of the image. If you just go to a lot of web pages you're probably going to eventually end up with one where the text is maybe a little too small for you to read something in a corner or at least read it comfortably and you can use Zoom to actually quickly zoom in on that.

Comments: 8 Responses to “How To Use Mac Screen Zoom”

John Russell

6 years ago

This is very helpful information for me in my role as Mac demonstrator to senior citizens. Thanks!

Maria Rosseeuw

Excellent short and very informative presentation. I was aware of the zoom feature but your in-depth knowledge showed how easy it is to use. Thank you.

Tony Lurie

I would really like to zoom out on that cap!

george rubin

Just what the doctor ordered. Critical knowledge for our presenters at NMUG for our weekly meetings.

Ian MacGregor

Wonderful information! I have mine set to use Control+Option keys (for picture-in-picture) and scroll on the trackpad to zoom in or out - I wonder if the Magic Mouse can also do the scrolling there. Thank you!

Gene Bechen

Thanks, Gary! Fantastic information!

Lynda Farabee

Is there a way to do this on an iPhone?

Gary Rosenzweig

Lynda: An iPhone is very different as there is no cursor, mouse, etc to focus a zoom area. But you can zoom in on a lot of things or enlarge the text, etc. What, exactly, are you trying to make larger?

Comments Closed.

How To Use Mac Screen Zoom

Comments: 8 Responses to “How To Use Mac Screen Zoom”

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