Zoom In On Your Desktop
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. |
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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). |
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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.
Observer Comments
Thanks for the reminder of this and suggestion for use. You can also use this with screen sharing programs like Bosco's Screen Share. I just tested it and it works great! Can't wait to do this in my next remote training session.
I teach in large lecture halls and have recently started using my mac (and keynote3) to make visual presentations. I would LOVE to be able to zoom, but when I try that (when Keynote running in presentation mode) I get a little window that let me move around in the presentation (arrows on the right and left, slide number at the bottom). Am I doing something wrong?
-Scott
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