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.