Use Hover Text To Make It Easier To Read and Type On a Mac

Hover Text is an Accessibility feature of Catalina and Big Sur that allows you to see the text your cursor is hovering over in a larger size. You can also see the text you are typing into fields or even apps like Pages. It is great for those that occasionally find text in an app to be too small to read.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's take a look at using Hover Text on your Mac to make text easier to read and type. 
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So Hover Text is an accessibility feature of macOS that allows you to see text on your screen, even if it's very small, and also allows you to type text even if the text entry font is really small as well. Now you're find this in macOS Big Sur and Catalina if you go to System Preferences and then to Accessibility and then from there go to Zoom. Now an option in Zoom is Enable Hover Text. So we'll turn that on. Now you'll see instructions here that you hold the Command key down to see Hover Text. So let's give that a try. Getting Hover text to appear is a little odd because you would think you would move your cursor over some text like this and then hold the Command key down. But, in fact you hold the Command key down first and then you move the cursor. So I'll hold the Command key down and then if I move my cursor over text you can see I get this enlarged version of the text. It's a lot easier to read. Obviously it's huge. If I release the Command key it goes away. So I have to basically hold the Command key down and move my cursor around the screen to see the Hover text. 
Now there are some options here. Let's dig right into those. If I click Options I could see I could set the text size so I could make it smaller. It doesn't have to be that huge. I could change the font, any font I have installed. You could also change the modifier from Command to Option or Control if you want. Notice it says Triple Press to Lock. So let's give that a try. If I triple press the Command key then it says Hover Text Locked. Now anywhere I move I'm always going to see Hover Text. So I don't have to hold the Command key down anymore to see it. It's easy just to turn this off with three presses on the same key and now you're back to the mode where you have to hold the Command key or whatever the modifier key is down to see it. 
So let's say I'm looking at a webpage like this. If I hold the Command key down and move around I can see whatever text is underneath the cursor but much larger no matter what size the font is below. You could see it will give me an entire paragraph, or thereabouts, as I move around. But it does even more than that. If I go over images it will try to show me something there as well. So, for instance, here I just see the caption of the image. Here there's no caption so it gives me the file name. You could see here it actually gives me the extra information included with the image. You could see it appear here when I move over the image normally. But with Hover Text turned on you could see it shows me a large version. I also get descriptions of buttons and sometimes they match what you get normally. Like, for instance, if I move my cursor here it will come up with a little Share indicator there. But if I use Hover Text you could see it gives me Share enlarged. This one says New Tab but this one here you could see normally the subtext is Show Tab Overview. But I actually get a deeper description from Hover Text. Here I get less of a description. So you don't always get the same information when you use Hover Text that you get normally when you move over a button.
Now let's look at another aspect of Hover Text. That's the ability to see the text that you are typing. So if I go into Options here I could see here I've text entry location and I can set that to something like Near the Current Line, Top Left, Right, Bottom Left, Bottom Right, or Custom Spot. Let's say Near the Current Line. Now when I go to type text I actually can see what I'm typing. So the easiest way to do this is to turn on Hover Text by triple pressing the modifier key. So now it's locked on. Now when I start typing something you could see I get this large entry area here that mirrors the regular text entry there. Now this will work in some places but not others. So, for instance, if I try to type a new URL here you could see it works there in Safari. If I try to use the Search field here I notice that sometimes it comes up and sometimes it doesn't. So it's kind of hit or miss on the internet. So in Pages here when I start typing it actually shows me a large portion of what I'm typing. So it makes it really easy to see here exactly what I'm typing and maybe even focus more on the actual words I'm typing rather than seeing a whole wall of words from the entire document. 
Now in Pages you can adjust the font to whatever size you want and you can even zoom in. But you can't do that in an app like Messages. A lot of people ask me how they can make the text larger in Messages. But with Hover Text you don't have to. You can move your cursor over any piece of text and see a larger version of it and when you type some text you can see it larger using Hover Text as well. Now in Hover Text Options you can also set the text entry location to a regular point instead of having it cover stuff on the screen. So, for instance, I could say Appear at the Bottom Left. So now when I type something it's always there at the bottom left and not covering up whatever I want to see in the middle of the screen. If you use Custom what you'll get is some text that will be here and you can grab the left end here and drag it around and put it somewhere. Then it will stay there. Now notice when I'm typing using Hover Text I can put the cursor here and I can move around but I could also click in here to place the cursor. Now you also have the ability here to go and set colors. So you can set the text color. You can set the insertion point color from when you're typing. The background color of Hover Text, the Border color, and the Element Highlight color. So, for instance, let's go and set the background to Black and the text color to White. Now when I go to use Hover Text you could see it looks like that. 
So give Hover Text a try if you ever find yourself having trouble reading text or seeing the text that you're typing. You can use it just about anywhere. You can see it here as I move around the MacMost website. You can use it in places like Control Center. You can use it in the Menu Bar. It could be a really good solution if you occasionally have trouble reading some text in an app or two but you don't really want to change the whole look of your screen just to accommodate that one app. Or if you're someone who needs reading glasses but find that most of the time you can use your Mac just fine without them but every once in awhile there's a word or some element that's hard to see.

Comments: 5 Responses to “Use Hover Text To Make It Easier To Read and Type On a Mac”

Bart

4 years ago

This is the most useful video you have produce!

Nicholas Paul

HI Gary. this is excellent. I am used to Windows where many applications allow of a control key and mouse scroll to alter the size of the display text. I missed that feature in Mac but tired the recommendations you made and they really work for me. thanks !

Eric Warden

Gary, I liked this topic. I did find some unexpected behavior though. With 'Hover' turned on but not activated via the Command button several apps will show the enlarged text when entering text. So far, I have seen this in Apple mail, Simpenote, Scrivener, Drafts and TapForms. Don't know if you were aware of this behavior, but thought it might be something people should be aware of. Note - this happens without pressing the Command button or Locking the function with the triple press. Eric

carol labue

Hi. Hover text just turned on without my input. It's already turned off in the settings so how do I get rid of it? Thanks.

Gary Rosenzweig

Carol: Are you sure it is off? Check again. Maybe try turning it on and then off again.

Comments Closed.

Use Hover Text To Make It Easier To Read and Type On a Mac

Comments: 5 Responses to “Use Hover Text To Make It Easier To Read and Type On a Mac”

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