Magnifier

One area of technology that will always remain of utmost importance regardless of its advancements is accessibility. Whether you have lower visual acuity, you have a PowerPoint presentation with small characters or you want to be able to easily zoom in on a picture without losing too much of its quality in the process, a program such as Magnifier can be of great use, especially thanks to its keyboard navigation and smooth zooming animation.

Users with on-the-go setups based on USB flash drives will appreciate the program’s lightweight and portable form that removes the need for unnecessary installation wizards. When double-clicking the executable, the program will run in the background in a silent and low-profile manner, thanks to its lack of taskbar and system tray icon.

The application is perfect for users with keyboard-based workflows, since the primary means of interaction is via a useful set of hotkey combinations in lieu of clunky interfaces that take up screen space. Pressing the Windows and Shift keys while scrolling up or down zooms the image in and out with a smooth animation, similar in style to MacOS’ own iteration of the function.

Setting the zoom to a certain level and then pressing a combination of the Windows, Shift and E keys toggles that level on or off for users who can find the sweet spot for displaying the right amount of information on the screen. In order to avoid accidental triggers, users can exit the program completely by pressing the first two keys of the aforementioned combination concomitantly with the Q key.

Compared to the original Windows Magnifier, the application provides users with a smoother zoom accompanied by the zoom itself following the cursor as it moves, instead of creating a rectangle where you would normally have to drag the mouse over its borders to pan to other regions of the rest of the screen. This can be useful for students who want to focus on certain lines of text during their presentations.

However, one disadvantage is the lack of multi-monitor support, since the cursor does not seem to reach the margins of the secondary monitors, unlike Windows’ built-in solution. Finally, in order to circumvent the lack of a shortcut to start up the program, a hotkey programming utility such as AutoHotKey can be used to mimic Microsoft’s Magnifier shortcut, or even replace it completely.

If you are in the market for an application to augment the image on your screen while following the cursor, then Magnifier may be the right tool for you, thanks to its hotkey-based interaction and smooth zooming animations.