Mac OS X zoom in application with mouse wheel

Question

I am coming from Windows and miss the feature that allows to increase/decrease the text size in many applications (Chrome, PDF readers, Text editors,...) by using CTRL-MouseWheel. Instead the size of the whole display increases which is not what I want.

Any help appreciated

Solution 1

There's no such feature on the Mac - as you say, the only equivalent feature is to zoom the whole screen, when you turn on 'Zoom' in the Universal Access preference pane. To increase just the text size, you'll need to see if there's an option for this in individual programs' menus (as there is for some browsers, for example - e.g. in Safari, select 'Zoom Text Only' from the View menu, and then 'Zoom in' or 'Zoom out' from that menu).

Solution 2

Per-app "zooming" (and text resizing) is common on the Mac via pinch/unpinch gestures on trackpads, and via keyboard shortcuts like Cmd+ and Cmd-, but it's not common via the scroll wheel.

Full-screen zooming via the scroll wheel can be enabled in the Universal Access pane of System Preferences.

Solution 3

Command(plus)+ and Command(plus)- works in TextEdit.

I switched to Mac 1 year ago and I remember the weird feeling i use to get when Ctrl won't work like the way i wanted to.

Usually you can use Command button as equivalent to Windows Control button. e.g. Ctrl+C = Command+C

To increase/decrease size in browser, you can swipe two fingers outward to Zoomin and two fingers inward to Zoom-out.

As you will find out, zoom is much more Easier to do in Mac.

Tip: You can also Press control button and while keeping it pressed, use two finders upward and downward to Zoom the whole screen.

Solution 4

If you use a Logitech mouse on Logi Options app; go to any button control and switch it to "zoom with mouse wheel". you can then use the programmed button as a "modifier" to switch the wheel from scrolling to zooming in preview and safari. This works really well for me so far. In preview it even scrolls to the cursor center!

Solution 5

I made Mac Mouse Fix.

It lets you zoom in and out by scrolling while holding the Command (⌘) key. It works just like pinch-to-zoom on an Apple Trackpad.

On top of that it's open source, easy to use, 100% free, and it also has a bunch of other cool features that make your mouse better!

Download | GitHub

View more solutions

Comments

[thephpdev]

Did you ever find an actual solution that actually works that is not "buy a Magic Trackpad", or use "BetterTouchTool" which doesn't even include this feature?

[Vladtn]

No, I got used to not having it. Mac OS is so much better in so many ways that it doesn't really matter. Also, the Zoom options in System Preferences -> Accessibility, can be used to some extent if you need to zoom in on parts of a text.

[thephpdev]

– Ha! I would agree, I love macOS. As I'm sure was apparent from my wording, my mood was not one of optimism that day. I do still wish they'd add this functionality at the OS level, however – or at least open up the APIs to allow developers to be able to hook into the right parts of the OS to control it (which seems to be the issue BetterTouchTool's dev had).

[Vladtn]

So are you saying that this option is available in Chrome for Mac? Can you tell me how to enable it?

[HikeMike]

@Vladtn No. Chrome allows you to just increase font size in the menu.

[slhck]

@Vladtn Or via Cmd and the + or - key.

[HikeMike]

swipe is side to side (all fingers in the same direction). What you mean is called pinching.

[Dick.Guertin]

See additional edit above.

[David]

Well, this is an ease that Mac should take note about. I'm coming from Windows as @Vladtn and this kind of things make doubt of all the comments that I heard saying that Mac is easier to use :)

[Biraj Gautam]

sorry and this is how Macs are a no-no (and a lot more of missing keyboard keys and common shorcuts)\

[Spiff]

@Marecky SuperUser isn't the place for platform wars. Leave that nonsense on the playground.

[8bitme]

The pinch zoom feature mentioned in this answer is as close to mouse wheel zoom in Windows that I have found so far

[Robin Keskisarkka]

The downside of this is that it would disable the functionality of being able to scroll the pdf using the mouse wheel altogether.

[Daniel Goldfarb]

+1 Cmd+ and Cmd- are exact equivalent to Ctrl-MouseWheel.

[NetMage]

@DanielGoldfarbNo they are a very, very poor substitute. The more I use modern macOS the more I feel power users are given short shrift compared to Windows.

[NetMage]

That link isn't discussing per-app Zoom.

[Christoph]

Just to clarify, because this was not clear to me: whatever button you assign "zoom with mouse wheel" has to be pressed while you turn the wheel in order to zoom (which makes it difficult to use the middle mouse button (the wheel itself) for this. Since all other buttons are already occupied and a combination with keyboard modifiers is apparently not possible, I set the middle mouse button to "smart zoom". Not the same, but does the job most of the time.

[Ciprian Tomoiagă]

nice ! I've used the same app to set my Thumb Wheel for scrolling, and the nice thing is that you can set these per app. So only for Preview

[Fom]

This answer deserves to be higher up. It works for non-Logitech mouses too. And it is still being updated (by Noah) in 2022. Thanks Noah.