IdeaSift

Linux desktop users lack convenient full-screen zoom

Linux desktop users who need magnification struggle to zoom the whole screen: zooming inside applications affects each app separately, and small magnifier surfaces do not provide the same experience. Sway users specifically asked for an easy control such as Ctrl+scroll, similar to the macOS feature they already know. The VS Code requests in this cluster concern editor layout rather than desktop magnification.

For linux desktop users with low vision or accessibility needs. Mentioned from Feb 2018 to May 2020 on GitHub.

5 different people described this problem in 3 separate discussions.

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Indie fit
3.0/10
Pain
5.2/10
Frequency
6.5/10
Willingness to pay
0.0/10
Momentum
5.0/10
Who pays
Consumers
Competition
Medium
Build difficulty
High

What people said

Quoted word for word. Follow a link to read the whole discussion.

  1. On MacOS, a "killer" accessibility feature is enabling the user to zoom the entire screen via ctrl + two-finger scroll. While there are utilities for creating "magnifying glass" surfaces that zoom in on small parts of the screen, not many window managers support this like MacOS Quartz Compositor
    ybakos on GitHub (swaywm/sway)Oct 2018+76 upvotesAsked for a tool
  2. I had a try to implement this by calling glViewport with a rect bigger that the screen, mostly worked ,but each app is zoomed independently, not the whole screen
    Vaalla42 on GitHub (swaywm/sway)May 2020Asked for a toolHas a workaround
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