David A. Cox: Hey folks.
Today I'm going to teach you how to make everything bigger on your Mac.
That's coming up next on Tech Talk America.
Hey folks, and welcome to the class.
Today's video is for anyone out there who is visually impaired.
Today, I'm going to walk you through all of the different settings in
the Mac that allow you to make everything a little bit larger.
Now, obviously there are several different levels of vision
impairment, and my goal in this video is to cover the entire spectrum.
So we're going to start with some of the more simple settings, and
then we'll get into some of the more advanced accessibility features that
allow you to zoom way into the screen.
The first setting I always like to adjust is the screen's
resolution because this universally affects every single application.
Just go into system settings and navigate to displays.
Then you'll want to adjust this setting and until it's to your visual liking.
Now, it should also be noted if you make things too large, you can run into
problems where apps will become unusable.
This one setting by itself is often enough for most people, but for
those of you out there who need a bit more customization, let's continue.
At this point, I'd like you to open a finder window and press command and the
letter J as in jack on your keyboard.
This is the viewing options for Finder, and the options you see in this list
will change based on whether you're in icon, list, column, or cover flow view.
You can switch between these options by pressing the command key and numbers
one through four on your keyboard.
For example, command one is icon view, command two is list view.
Command three is column view and command four is cover flow.
At this point I'd like to point out at the bottom of the viewing options window,
there is an option to use as default.
Just to clarify what that button means is when you come back to this
folder in the future, it's going to retain that same viewing option.
So what I would recommend that you do is go through the different parts of
the Mac that you use the most, like the Applications folder, documents
downloads, iCloud Drive and any other cloud services that you use and set
the viewing preferences for each one of them, and then click use as default.
For example, here in my applications folder, I really like it to be set to
icon view, so I'll press command one.
I'd like the icons themselves to be a bit bigger, so I'm going to
bump up this setting a little bit.
Here I can determine the grid spacing, and if I need to make the
text size underneath the icons a bit larger, I can do that here.
If you'd prefer that the background of this window is something other
than what it is currently, you can set it to a specific color
or you can even upload a photo.
At this point, let's switch over to Apple Mail.
If you go into the settings of Apple mail and then click on the tab that says fonts
and colors, you will find these three types of text that you can make bigger.
For example, if I click on message font, you'll notice as I bump up the font size,
the text in the email, visible in the background is now becoming a bit larger.
The other setting in this list message, list font.
Again, as I increase the font here, you can see the messages in
the sidebar are also expanding.
There is one important detail that I would like to take a moment to clarify if
you alter the size of the message font.
In doing so when you reply to an email, It is going to be set to that same
font and the person receiving it will also see it in that font on their end.
I bring this up because if you are a seeing abled person and you're sending an
email to someone who is visually impaired, you can manually up the font and know
that on their end it will look bigger.
If we go back to system settings and go into appearance, you'll notice
that you can adjust the size of the icons located in the sidebar.
If you're in Safari, the Messages app, calendar or Apple Mail ,Command "+" or
Command "-" will allow you to make the fonts larger or smaller.
In the case of Safari, there is also an option if you go into settings
and head over to the advanced tab to never use fonts that are smaller
than whatever you set this to.
At this point, let's get into some of the more advanced accessibility features.
First things first, if your vision is poor, you will benefit by
running apps in full screen mode.
Now, if you're in any app on the Mac and you want to take it full
screen, just press the function key and the letter F, as in Frank.
If you decide to do this and you want to navigate back and forth between
other apps that are in full screen mode, just hold down the control key and then
press the left or right arrow keys.
If you have trouble seeing the menu bar at the top, head over to
system settings and then navigate to accessibility followed by display.
Here you'll find an option to make that larger and just a heads up, you do
have to log out and then log back in in order for those settings to take effect.
While we're in this menu, let's go over a few other things.
If you have trouble seeing the cursor, this is where you can adjust the
size of the pointer and you can also change the color and the outline.
Let's now go back to the accessibility settings and go into Zoom.
There are several different ways that you can zoom into the screen
and some of those settings, I have to admit I like better than others.
For example, the first one that you see in this list allows you to
use your keyboard to trigger screen zoom, and then zoom in or out.
Personally, I don't love this option.
What I like instead is to use the third option in this list, which is
to use a scroll gesture in combination with a modifier key in order to zoom.
When it comes to Zoom style, I recommend leaving this on full screen.
As you can see, I set my modifier key to the control key, and here at the bottom
you'll see an option to hover text.
So if this is turned on and I hold down the command key, while my cursor is over
a piece of text, it expands just the text.
At this point, I'd like to quickly demo the differences
between some of these methods.
Let's say I'm reading an article online on a highly respected news source, and
I want to make all of the text bigger when I use Command Plus or Command Minus.
It works to a certain extent, but the problem is it can make it very
difficult to navigate the website when you take it to the extremes.
So now I'm going to use Command Minus to reset it to more of a normal size,
so I can demo the other Zoom method I recommended to you a moment ago.
At this point, I'm going to hold down the control key on
my keyboard and on my mouse,
I'm going to scroll up as I move my cursor around the screen, you'll see it
adjust where on the screen I'm zoomed in.
Best of all, the website is fully functional.
If you are legally blind, the feature you'll want to master is called voiceover.
Voiceover is a built-in screen reader that provides spoken and braille descriptions
of everything you see on the screen.
There is a training module built into macOS.
So if you do want to learn more about how to use voiceover, I encourage
you to explore that tutorial.
For those of you who are watching this video, after macOS Sonoma comes out,
there is one additional setting that I would like to bring to your attention.
You can set the default text size for calendar finder, mail messages,
notes, and other supported apps, if you go into system settings and
navigate to accessibility, you'll then want to click on displays, and
here in the middle of this list you'll find an option called text size.
And here you can set one master font or you can set different
preferences for different apps.
Keep in mind if you live in a rural area and need help with your Mac, you
can work with me one-on-one from the privacy and comfort of your own home.
You can book a one hour tech therapy session.
That's what I like to call it these days on my website at TechTalkAmerica.com.
Thank you so much for watching everyone.
This is David A.
Cox with Tech Talk America.
Class dismissed.