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.