Ever want to peer at something a little more closely, but don’t want to stop, change display properties to a lower resolution, look at whatever it is, then change display properties back to your normal resolution? You don’t have to – if you have Jaguar.
Due to the amount of emails we’ve received recently about zooming in OS X, we’re covering this zoom feature again today for those that missed our previous coverage.
Mac OS 10.2 introduces a lovely new Zoom feature designed for people who need the ability to zoom in and out at will, which covers pretty much all of us:
[Command,Option,*] toggles Zoom on and off. That’s “Apple, Option, Asterisk” in English.
[Command,Option,+] zooms in, centering on the cursor position when Zoom is on. “Apple, Option, Plus Sign”
[Command,Option,-] zooms out. “Apple, Option, Minus Sign”
That’s it! And it zooms waaaaaaaaaaaaay in. Try it. It will zoom out to your display’s current resolution, as you would expect. If you move the crusor while “zoomed” in, you will scroll around the screen. By the way, it’s a neat trick to play on a fellow Jag user – just jump on his or her machine when they’re not looking and zoom really far in, leave it that way and watch them try to figure it out. More options for other accessibility capabilities are in the “Universal Access” pane of System Preferences.
Neat trick – if it works for you
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” /> The zoom feature doesn’t work on my iBook (tangerine) under 10.2.4. The inverse-screen effect does, though (I’ve also enabled the zoom feature in the Sys Prefs / Universal Access prefpane, to no avail).
Perhaps it’s a CRT-only deal? Or something to do with the graphics card?
It works great on our flat-screen iMac.
You have to go into the “Zoom Options” in the Universal Access control and pick a zoom max of greater than 1.
Works for me with my Pismo 500. The inverse is neat trick. As does the zoom
Very cool.
Wouldn’t that just be “Command-Option-8” to toggle it, though? The asterix implies I might need to use shift also.
Those command keys also happen to zoom text in Jaguar when you have system zooming disabled.
And to Gabriel, the cmd-opt-* works on your numeric keypad, so it’s not just an 8.
This is a great way to view quicktime movies and streaming content from other websites.
Command – Option – (+) and (-) also zooms web pages in Safari. Just don’t activate system wide zoom with Command – Option -(*)
I wonder, is this zoom feature available to non Quartz-Extreme capable systems?
The keyboard actuated zoom is cool. I didn’t know of this.
The inverse-screen (I like to call it the ‘x-ray mode’ of which I knew about) is cooler still.
Just don’t invoke the zoom while using the x-ray effect. My iMac 800 10.2.4 stopped dead in its tracks. It ended all processes, hesitated on a blank blue screen then resumed in x-ray mode invoking my login items. Anyone else experience this?
This is not just a Jag option this also works in OSX .1.5
Sunny, in Safari, you don’t use the Option key to zoom in or out. Just Command+ and Command-
Pale Rider… Command +and – in Safari just alters the text point size, it does not actually zoom anything. Graphic elements remain the same size.
This zoom trick is the Mutts Nuts!
Odd…it works on my iBook (Dual USB)