Basics4Mac - Magnify a Portion of the Screen

Easier to see

Screen magnifier
Click to see a larger image

If the text on the screen isn't quite big enough or your eyes aren't quite what they used to be or you want a quick look at the detail in a photo, Lion can put a "magnifying glass" on the screen to make a part of the screen larger.

(Snow Leopard has a similar feature so if you aren't on Lion yet, read on.)

Here's how to use the magnifying glass.

To use the magnifying glass, you need to have Zooming turned on:

Go to System Preferences from the Dock or the Apple Menu.
Go the the Universal Access panel,
Go to the Seeing view.
Turn on Zoom if it isn't already on.

There are two ways to activate the magnifying glass:

Hold down the Control key. If you have a trackpad, move two fingers up and down to zoom in and out. If you have a Magic Mouse, move one finger up and down the mouse. If your mouse has a roller ball or scroll wheel, move it up or down to zoom in and out.
The control key plus up and down gives you a variable amount of magnification depending on how far up or down you move on the trackpad or mouse. Up gives you more magnification and down gives you less.
As you move the mouse pointer around on the screen, the magnifying glass follows, magnifying whatever is underneath.
To get rid of the magnifying glass, just reduce the magnification to 0 (move down on the trackball/mouse) until the magnifying glass disappears.
For a quick peek of magnification, just hold down the Control and Option keys at the same time. The magnifying glass appears only for the time you have these keys held down.

Snow Leopard doesn't have the magnifying glass, but Control + up/down on the trackpad will zoom the entire screen. You can find out how it works here.

If you prefer the way that Snow Leopard zooms the entire screen over the magnifying glass, you can make the entire screen zoom in Lion by going back to the Seeing view of Universal Access and unchecking Zoom in window.

The Universal Access system preference has many options to make your Mac easier to use. iI you have any sort of difficulty seeing or hearing your Mac or difficulties using the keyboard, trackpad or mouse, check out Universal Access. There is a good chance that you will find an option or two to Mac your make easier to use. Learn more from Apple here.