MacOS – Zoom/Expand part of the Mac’s screen

accessibilitymacmacoszoom

Is there a way to zoom in/expand/enlarge part of my Mac's screen to fill the entire screen?

Basically, I'm looking for an app that allows you to select a part of the screen and that will then expand that part of the screen all the way to cover the full screen. So if I have a monitor that measures 1366×768 and I select a part of the screen that is 500X300 it will then enlarge that small part to cover the full available screen real estate.

Best Answer

You can use the built-in zoom feature to zoom in on a part of the screen on your Mac.

(Note: these instructions are adapted for El Capitan but also work with Sierra and as far back as Lion, though certain menus/buttons may be labeled differently).

  1. Go to System Preferences
  2. Navigate to the Accessibility Settings menu
  3. Choose Zoom from the pane on the left.
  4. Enable Use keyboard shortcuts to zoom.
  5. Enable Smooth images (for better quality with images)
  6. Enable Zoom follows the keyboard focus.
  7. Ensure your Zoom settings match these:

Ideal zoom settings

  1. Then, choose between Picture-in-picture and Fullscreen for the Zoom Style; see the pictures below for help choosing.

Zoom in picture-in-picture mode:

Picture-in-picture mode

Zoom in fullscreen mode:

Fullscreen mode

After turning on Zoom, you can control it with keyboard shortcuts, as mentioned by Paul Zagoridis:

Command+Option+8 toggles zoom on/off.

Command+Option+= zooms in.

Command+Option+- zooms out.

Source + more info: http://basics4mac.com/article.php/magnify

Reply below for any additional help or if you have questions; I hope this helps!

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