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

Answer 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).

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

Sort of same situation here. I found that using Ctrl+Cmd (or Ctrl+Alt) and the wheel (actually, two finger scrolling as I'm using a trackpad) works for zooming in and out in MS Office for the Mac. It seems like somehow adding a key to the combo overrides the usual whole screen zooming typical of the Mac.

Anyhow, I just found this behaviour in Office. Other apps work as mentioned in other answers: use the pinch gesture, of Cmd+Plus or Cmd+Minus for zooming in and out.

My configuration: MacOS X 10.6.4. Office 2011.

HTH