I'm trying to get an Ubuntu laptop functional for a visually impaired friend. Her impairment is such that a screen magnifier would solve the issue. I've tried out Kmag (as its the only hit when searching the software center for "magnifier"), but it seems odd the Ubuntu lacks a default. So I'm assuming I'm missing something obvious.
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2I am visually impaired myself. I need a full screen magnifier all the time in order to work with any distribution (or windows / mac). A very good magnifying experience can be achieved with Compiz Manager like Mitch said. A pitty that the newer desktop enviroments seem to forget that when they completely disposed of compiz. That's way I'm never returning to linux again! Unless a better alternative comes up... but still no luck. I understand your problem, no suggested magnifier is good enough in comparison to windows 7 or 8's build in magnifier...– user141122Mar 17, 2013 at 17:16
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I can't speak to the quality of Window's built in magnifier, but compiz is still being used in the default Unity desktop as of Ubuntu 12.10.– nelsondaMar 20, 2013 at 14:58
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Check out this answer, similar Louis Gagnon's.– Pablo BianchiDec 19, 2018 at 2:49
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12 Answers
xzoom
I found a simple solution that is working very well for me. I installed xzoom from the default repositories.
The usage is very simple, and exactly what I wanted:
- start
xzoom. - place the window where it does not disturb you.
- "drag" your mouse cursor from within the window to the spot of the screen you want to magnify.
Additional note: I'm on Ubuntu 14.04 and before discovering xzoom, I tried the approaches suggested in the accepted solution. My experiences:
- In
ccsmI failed to find the "Magnifier". Under "Accessibility" I have an "Enhanced Desktop Zoom", but it is not really clear to me how it works, and I don't like to enable a global shortcut for this. - The Virtual Magnifying Glass is not in the repositories, and the downloaded version does not like my
libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0(at first it did not find my installedlibgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so; fixingLD_LIBRARY_PATHturns out that it is not a 64-bit executable...).
Another alternative I found is gpick, which is also available natively on Ubunutu. It works by showing a zoomed in window in the left area -- and the zoomed area follows the mouse cursor:
Compared to xzoom it seems to lack the possibility to scale and resize the zoom window, but offers the additional feature of picking pixel colors -- which sometimes is a related use case for me.
answered Oct 10, 2014 at 17:24
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3This is perfect, thank you! I'm using this for doing some pixel-level work and it is great strain relief for the neck. Nov 9, 2014 at 20:15
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3@mcb: Same for me, mainly for checking anti-aliasing quality etc. BTW: You can also control the magnification e.g.
xzoom -mag 4. Nov 10, 2014 at 9:21 -
2@bluenote10 : to enable the "Magnifier" under
ccsm/"Accessibility", you have to install the packagecompiz-plugins(formerlycompiz-plugins-extra) Dec 28, 2016 at 13:50 -
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1
Unity (until Ubuntu 17.04)
CompizConfig Settings Manager
To use magnifier in Ubuntu, you can do so by using CompizConfig Settings Manager. If you don't have it installed, you can do so from the Ubuntu Software Center.
Or, just press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, run the command below.
sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager
You can also use Synaptic Package Manager
Once you invoke the program, look under Accessibility for magnifier, and click on it to configure it.
Or you can try Virtual Magnifying Glass 3.5
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2
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5there is only "Enhanced Zoom Desktop" in default
compiz-plugins-default, if you want "Magnifier" you have to installcompiz-plugins(formerlycompiz-plugins-extra) Dec 28, 2016 at 13:54 -
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1
Button4is scroll wheel up andButton5is scroll wheel down. Feb 19, 2017 at 14:53 -
On my Ubuntu 18.04 this doesn't work reliable. For example, currently (uptime 83d) this works on my 1st screen but not on my 2nd. It's NOT a hardware issue. If you run Ubuntu desktop for a longer time, some features start to vanish until the next restart of X-Window. No idea why (I think due to some race conditions when things are slower than expected due to RAM pressure.) BTW this reminds me on Windows 95 which became unreliable after some days, too. Guess that Ubuntu still is some 20 years behind Microsoft in re-inventing all of their bugs from scratch again.– TinoNov 8, 2019 at 10:19
With Cinnamon desktop
I'm visually impaired (I have Cone Dystrophy and thus my central vision is gone and I absolutely have to use full screen zooming to use a computer). This was my solution:
First of all, get rid of Unity and install the Cinnamon desktop; it's a much better interface anyway IMNSHO:
Once you have that installed, you can install Tobias Quinn's excellent gnome-shell-mousewheel-zoom.
This will provide Compiz-style mousewheel zooming functionality with Cinnamon.
Another alternative is to use Linux Mint which is an Ubuntu-based distro with Cinnamon built in by default.
If you choose this option, you simply have to add the Tobias Quinn PPA and install the gnome-shell-mousewheel-zoom package.
Canonical has abandoned visually impaired users and their actions are, to say the least, reprehensible and shameful. Every other OS creator provides quality full-screen zooming support for visually impaired users but since the advent of Unity, the actions of the devs of Ubuntu indicate that they no longer care about those users. I'll continue to use Ubuntu-based distros but Unity is now permanently on my "no-fly" list.
Gnome Shell / Ubuntu 17.10+
In Ubuntu 18.04 you don't need to install anything.
Go to Settings -> Keyboard by using the Applications icon
at the
bottom-left end of your screen.From there, scroll down to the Universal Access section.
Then setup the 3 keyboard shortcuts you wish to use for the magnifer:
- turn on/off zoom, zoom in, and zoom out.
Visually: 
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At my Ubuntu 18.04 (still using Compiz/Unity) which was updated from 16.04 which was updated from 14.04 which was .. (you guess it) it is somewhere else: "System Settings" - "Keyboard" - "Shortcuts" - "Universal Access". And changing settings there seems to not have any effect at all, so it does not work for me. Note that Unity runs 80+ days now, perhaps it needs a restart to work. Fun fact: If you search for "zoom" in System Settings, you are routed to some other "Universal Access" which shows no trace of any "zoom" feature. (This might be some leftover from previous Ubuntus.)– TinoNov 8, 2019 at 10:44
Literally every UNIX X11-enabled system typically has a set of tools, including a magnifier utility in question. Of course, nowadays most of them look quite old-school, but anyways they do what they were meant for. Here it is:
$ which xmag
/usr/bin/xmag
$ man xmag | egrep -A1 '(NAME|AUTHOR)'
NAME
xmag - magnify parts of the screen
--
AUTHORS
Dave Sternlicht and Davor Matic, MIT X Consortium.
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Sadly this does not help much, as this does not update the zoomed area when the contents changes. So you cannot magnify what you type etc.– TinoNov 8, 2019 at 10:20
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Well, maybe it doesn't help much in this very case, but it doesn't mean it's the only case ever possible.– poigeNov 8, 2019 at 10:22
This might not be the answer you want but so you know there is also the gnome-shell magnifier which would require you to install gnome-shell and remove unity in Ubuntu.
I wrote a how-to on installing gnome 3.10 on ubuntu on my blog which might be useful if you are interested in trying this out. GNOME Shell 3.10 magnifier has focus and caret tracking as well as mousetracking which I think is not offered by many.
However, the caret and focus tracking settings are still controlled via gsettings in case you want to turn either of them off and cannot find out where to do that. Additionally the magnified view cannot provide a scaled level of magnification at the moment so expect larger magnification levels to lead to a lower quality graphic until that is improved.
More information about that is in another post about GNOME Shell's magnifier scaling which may be of use to you. It also explains how to scale the desktop view via gsettings without any magnifier at all.
I am not aware of any default screen magnifier in Ubuntu.
In many applications you can hold Ctrl then scroll the middle mouse button to zoom the screen, or pressing +/-.
I have upvoted your question because I would also like to know of a better alternative to Kmag and I'm sure many other users would too, especially those in similar situations to your friend.
answered Jul 17, 2012 at 20:04
Virtual Magnifying Glass
To me, Virtual Magnifying Glass is the best for portable computers.
Yes, as reported in a previous post, there is a specific problem with Ubuntu LTS 14.04 Trusty 64 bit (no problem with older 64 bit versions of Ubuntu, neither with 32 bit versions). If you dont feel like compiling the source of VMG, you may manually install the contents of the i586.rpm of the 3.2.1-1 version. The application executable file was "magnifier" instead of "vmg", and it works under Trusty 64 bit. Compared with the latest versions of VMG, you will lose direct control of zoom factor by mouse wheel in the magnified window, that's all, and this older version of VMG is still the best inmho.
For Ubuntu 16.04
Press Ctrl + Alt + T
The terminal opens, type
sudo apt install compizconfig-settings-manager
Go to Ubuntu icon on Top Left corner of desktop
Click on it and type compiz
Click on the compiz icon that appers in the window
The following window opens:
Click on OK
Go to Accebility --> Enhanced Zoom Desktop --> Tick the box
Click on Enhanced Zoom Desktop
Click on Zoom In Key --> Disabled
Tick the box Enabled
Click on Grab Key Combination
Press together
Ctrl + F7
Click on OK
Click on Zoom Out Key --> Disabled
Tick on the box Enabled
Click on Grab Key Combination
Press together
Ctrl + F6
Click on OK
Close the window
From now on
to Zoom In press
Ctrl + F7
and to Zoom Out press
Ctrl + F6
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I have compiz enhanced up and went through your screenshots above. My shift combo is Shift + F1 for zoom in and Shift F2 to zoom out. Clicked ok as above but nothing happens when I use the key combo.– a coderApr 7, 2017 at 12:35
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@acoder Perhaps Shift+F1/F2 are no good settings. At my side (Ubuntu 18.04) it works with Super+Alt++ and Super+Alt+-. At least if the gods of Unity are in the right mood it sometimes seems to work. So best is to retry this setting after a fresh boot. (And make sure no other shortcuts occupy what you choose. (Some might be taken like Super+P, this ususally is taken by BIOS.)– TinoNov 8, 2019 at 11:10
There is another answer to press Print Screen and to use your image viewer. The main advantage is in a usual, clean interface.
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This is a valid but complex way to get some magnification. Usually, a magnifier is a tool, not a complex way to do something. At least that was why I came here. So I'd expect that people which search for a magnifier usually want it to update dynamically to the current changes on the screen, to better see differences in rendering after they change things. Not all tools have some easy zoom feature like the browser. (Also doing a zoom in a tool often changes the aliasing or layout, so this usually is not what you want if you are looking for a magnification.)– TinoNov 8, 2019 at 11:38
USE DEFAULT OPTION. No need to install anything extra In UBUNTU 18.04 LTS,. It is lot more easier than ever.
Magnify a screen area
Magnifying the screen is different than just enlarging the text size. This feature is like having a magnifying glass, allowing you to move around by zooming in on parts of the screen.
Step 1: Open the Activities overview and start typing Universal Access.
Step 2: Click on Universal Access to open the panel.
Step 3: Press on Zoom in the Seeing section.
Step 4: Switch Zoom to ON in the top-right corner of the Zoom Options window.
You can now move around the screen area. By moving your mouse to the edges of the screen, you will move the magnified area in different directions, allowing you to view your area of choice.
You can quickly turn zoom on and off by clicking the accessibility icon on the top bar and selecting Zoom.
You can change the magnification factor, the mouse tracking, and the position of the magnified view on the screen. Adjust these in the Magnifier tab of the Zoom Options window.
Reference: link
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Do you know if there is a way to have more granularity than Screen Part: Top Half, Bottom Half, etc? I'd like to simulate how the Windows Magnifier works in "Docked at the top" mode– ReezyJun 22, 2019 at 13:54
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I have Ubunut 18.04LTS, but "Universal Access" looks entirely different at my side. However I came from 12.04 to 14.04 to 16.04 to 18.04, so perhaps something got mixed up in this path.– TinoNov 8, 2019 at 11:20
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I have Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS and "Universal Access" is same as posted above. Nov 9, 2019 at 12:28
After installing a lot of applications, now I am using gnome-shell-mousewheel-zoom from Tobias Quinn. Download the package, install it, and use Alt + mouse wheel to zoom in and out.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tobias-quinn/gsmz
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-mousewheel-zoom
