TMO Quick Tip - Zoom In On Your Desktop

by , 7:30 AM EDT, June 26th, 2006

When I'm teaching a class or presenting at an event, I often zoom in on part of my Mac's display to make it easier for everyone to see menu options and buttons in application palettes. The effect usually draws a few "oohs" and "ahs" along with questions about how I did that. The feature is built in to Mac OS X, and only takes a few steps to activate. Here's how:

• Choose Apple menu > System Preferences to launch the System Preferences application.
• Select Universal Access.
• Click the Seeing tab.
• Click the Zoom: On radio button.

Use the Universal Access Preference Pane to turn on the Zoom feature.

To enlarge part of your display, type Command-Option-=. Your Mac zooms in on the area around your mouse pointer. When you move your mouse, the zoomed area follows. Command-Option-- (Command-Option-Minus) shrinks your display back down to normal size.

My display, normal size (left), and zoomed (right).

Even though I use the Zoom feature in Mac OS X during presentations, I also find it handy when I get emails with super-small text. Instead of changing the text size, I just zoom in a little.

if you have ideas for Mac related tips that you think other TMO readers might find helpful.