How To Use Screen Zoom On a Mac

Screen Zoom allows you to zoom in on a portion of the screen to see the images or text there when they are too small otherwise.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you how to use the Screen Zoom feature on your Mac.
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So you find Screen Zoom in System Preferences, Accessibility, and then look for Zoom here on the left. Now to turn it on you need to use either a keyboard shortcut or a trackpad gesture. So if you have the keyboard shortcut set here you could see that it's Option Command 8 to turn it on. Also note that Option Command + and - or really + and the = key will increase or decrease the amount of zoom. You can also enable a gesture on your trackpad to do it but we'll just stick with the keyboard shortcut for this. 
Now there are three types of zoom styles. Picture-in-Picture, Split Screen, and Full Screen. Let's start by looking at Picture-in-Picture. I'm going to enable zoom with the keyboard shortcut, Option Command 8 and you could see I get this little window here that zooms in on a portion of the screen. As I move the pointer around the rectangle changes. So I can zoom in on any part I want. Let's turn it Off and look at the options here. I can go to Advanced here and I can change how this rectangle moves. So right now it's only when the pointer reaches an edge but I can set it to Continuously with the Pointer or Pointer is At or Near the Center of the zoomed image. Let's do Continuously with the Pointer. Turn it On and you can see now if I'm at the upper left the pointer is at the upper left. If I'm at the upper right the pointer is at the upper right. If I change to Center you can see the pointer is always at the center unless I get to a corner or edge of the screen. 
Also notice when I turn it On I can now use the other keyboard shortcuts. The Command Option Plus or Command Option Minus to change the zoom amount. Other options include being able to instantly get back to the last zoom factor when you go back in. Invert Colors, if I turn that On you can see colors are inverted in the zoom area here. I can also turn On or Off smooth images. With it Off I'm going to see the pixels a lot clearer. Let's zoom in a lot here and you can see those pixels. If I turn that On you can see how it smooths it out. You could also have it Flash the Screen when a notification appears and it's not in the zoom window. You can keep the zoom window stationary. Turn that On and then you zoom notice that wherever I move the pointer the zoom window stays stationary. So how do you actually move it? Well, you have this Adjust Size and Location button. Click that and now you can move this wherever you want. So you can kind of put it into a corner if you want. Click OK. Now it's always going to be there. When you're doing that you can also adjust the size. So you can drag the edges in if you want. 
You have options here for Controls. So here you can have a temporary Zoom by holding the Control and Option key. Let's turn that On. I'll do Control and Option and you could see it zoomed in. But as soon as I release those it goes away. This one here, Control and Command, will detach the zoom viewer from the pointer. So let's turn that On. Turn On the zoom here and if I hold Control and Command everything seems to work fine except when I release Control and Command you can see the zoom window pops back over there and the cursor is back to that point. So if you're looking at something, like let's say we are looking at that option right there and then we want to look over here at something else, we release and get back there. This allows you to toggle between two different modes. We've only looked at the one mode so far. 
You can also use keyboard shortcuts to adjust the zoom window. So if you want to resize you can hold the Control, Option and Command and then use the arrow keys or Option Command and arrow keys to shift it. So let's turn that On. Then let's go in here and then I could use that keyboard shortcut there to adjust. You can see I'm adjusting the size like that. I can use this, actually, to move it around in line with these commands here. You could also do the same with the trackpad gestures if you want. You can also set a maximum and minimum zoom range if you like. Then under Follow Focus you can have the zoom area move to wherever it is you're typing. So let's say we have it Always. Now let's go to zoom here and we're zooming normally. But let's say we go here to type something and now I'm going to type and you could see how it jumps to where I'm typing. That wouldn't happen if I didn't have this turned to Always or When Typing. Then this adjusts how the zoom window will then move while you're typing. This is exactly where the zoom window will go when you start typing or start moving the pointer when you were previously typing. So in other words when the zoom is going to jump somewhere what happens.
Now let's go and take a look at some of the other styles. So you've got Split Screen. When we turn that on basically part of the screen becomes the Zoom, in this case the top. But you could go into Advanced here and then Adjust Size and Location and you could see I could make this larger and I can also drag it to the left, drag it to the right, drag it to the bottom to place it somewhere else. Notice when you're in this mode you have fewer options. You only have the options that apply to that mode. So finally we have Full Screen. When you turn that On the whole screen Zooms. Then it will follow the pointer wherever you go. 
There's actually kind of a fourth option as well.  Using the Full Screen you can also choose Display. So this is if you have more than one screen. I do. So when I click there I can say, I want my secondary display to be the zoom display and the primary display to stay normal. So this is really handy if you've got two displays and you need to use zoom and you just want to have that second display zoom in on the area where the pointer is or wherever it is you're typing. So your main display works just like a regular Mac. There's no real difference. But the secondary display, you can always glance over to that for a zoomed in view. 
So the next thing you need to do is try this out. Try the three different zoom styles, try some of the options and play around with it and see if it's useful to you. At least get familiar with it so if a situation comes up where you think it could be handy you know how to quickly activate it and use it and also get out of it when you're done. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

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

Jesper Nielsen

3 years ago

Gary, any way to "move" around if zoomed in when using quick time player?

Thanks in advanced

Gary Rosenzweig

Jesper: Do you mean using the Zoom feature I describe in this video? It doesn't matter which app you are using, it is something that acts on the whole screen.

Thanks Gary, I wasn't aware at that moment, but everything is fine now.

Jean-Claude

So very well explained!

Christi McG

My zoom appears when unwanted by using the mouse. How do you just turn this off? I'm always having to command 0 to undo these zooms. Frustrating.

Christi: Look at the options I show in the video. There is one for turning it on with the mouse or trackpad gesture. Just turn that one off.

David Sidman

2 years ago

Fantastic video! Key question though: can you set the Mac to go into Zoom mode automatically upon startup? If not, then a nearly-blind person won't be able to activate the Zoom feature in the first place (unless they can manage to find Option-Command-8).

David: Not sure. Do you mean if you need to restart for some reason? Try it.

Comments Closed.

How To Use Screen Zoom On a Mac

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

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