Magic Mouse Zoom In/Out
Apple Magic Mouse is fantastic – but the zoom feature of many apps is an inconsistent experience and messy. Here’s a list of different apps I use with the Zoom modifier keys
Last Updated: December 25th, 2023
By: Steve
I’ve just been given a fantastic Christmas present of a Magic Mouse for my Macbook. It’s awesome and I absolutely love it. I don’t get on well with Trackpads (though in fairness the Apple Trackpads are the very best of the bunch) and I enjoy a mouse. Combining them into the Magic Mouse gives me the best of both worlds and the usability is intuitive in the main.
Except for zooming in and out. Yeah, you can double tap if you’ve enabled ‘smart zoom’ but I find this rather un-smart – and in general I really would prefer to decide the zoom level rather than Apple thinking it knows best on that. And I use a bunch of apps that I like to zoom in and out of.
Zooming with the magic mouse is a shambles. It’s an inconsistent set of modifier keys depending on which App you’re using and it’s confusing. So here’s various different modifier keys I’ve found for different Apps (even Apps from Apple themselves are inconsistent as you’ll see below).
All zooming uses a modifier key and single finger scroll up or down (I’d like a double finger up/down scroll to zoom like the Trackpad)
| Application | Zoom Modifier Keys |
|---|---|
| Maps | Shift |
| Freeform | CMD+Option |
| Affinity (Photo/Designer) | CMD+Option |
| Web Browsers | N/A (You need to enable Smart Zoom) |
| Preview | N/A (Smart Zoom, and it’s a bit rubbish) |
| Photos | N/A (No zoom feature at all) |
| Microsoft Excel / Word (maybe others) | Control |
| Wondershare Filmora | CMD |
These are the applications that I’ve found so far. I’ll come back and update the table if I find others, which I may.
Please leave a comment below if you have other apps that you know the modifier keys for when you want to zoom in or out using the Apple Magic Mouse.