bill toulas | August 4, 2012

Zoom on your Gnome Shell!

This post was made with another stylesheet and it might be messed up!

Zooming on Gnome Shell can be done in many different ways, but here is the quickest and easiest way to do it whenever you need it!

First you will have to download this python script, and then you will have to make sure it runs on startup. Ubuntu users can simply add this ppa:tobias-quinn/gsmz on their own risk.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tobias-quinn/gsmz
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-mousewheel-zoom

Now you will need to restart Gnome Shell by pressing Alt+F2 and then “r” and Enter. Some of you may need to restart your operating system so that mousewheelzoom.py may run on startup.

After this you can zoom anywhere (desktop, windows etc) by pressing the left “Alt” + mouse wheel!

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  • http://profiles.google.com/misterpah misterpah pah

    the easiest is by using the built in zoom features inside the accessibility menu

    • Bill_Toulas

      How is that the easiest since I will have to hover to the accessibility icon and turn the zoom switch to “On”. The way this article presents is much faster and easier!

      • http://profiles.google.com/misterpah misterpah pah

        wait.. so i have to connect to the internet and use the terminal and copy-paste the installation code (which only works in ubuntu and debian based distribution) and then restart my gnome-shell with the run command. then i can do the zoom using the mouse scroll..

        yeah.. i can see it’s much easier than clicking the zoom switch on..
        thank you for your Pro tip !
        i think i stay a noob a little while longer..

        • Bill_Toulas

          But you will only do this once! After the installation process you will be able to zoom everywhere just by pressing Alt+mouse wheel. It can’t get easier than this my friend!

          • anon

            Even easier, making this application redundant, is to set the keyboard bindings for the accessibility zoom (defined by the dconf keys magnifier, magnifier-zoom-in and magnifier-zoom-out in /org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys)

          • Bill_Toulas

            The optical result is of lesser quality for some reason. I don’t know why, but when I zoom in with the accessibility zoom I get some tearing (which I don’t when using mousewheelzoom.py)