Sidecar Zoom Issue

[usagora]

Probably the best thing is just to watch this video I made of the issue, as it's harder to describe than show:

Here's the written form:

TL;DR: What I want is to keep the iPad as my extended desktop and ONLY zoom in on the display in which my mouse cursor is located.

I use the "Zoom" Accessibility feature constantly (System Preferences > Accessibility > Zoom). I have it set to zoom when I press and hold the control key and scroll on the mouse. I don't normally use multiple displays, but I'm starting to use my new iPad Air 4 with Sidecar. I'm assuming this issue would apply to any external display being used as an extended desktop. The problem I'm encountering is if I try to zoom in on something on my iMac display (and, yes, the mouse cursor is on the iMac when I'm doing this), the iPad screen also zooms in, so I no longer have a 100% view of that screen. I saw a promising-sounding option under System Preferences > Accessibility > Zoom called "Choose Display..." but unfortunately that doesn't do what it sounded like it would do. I thought it would let me choose which display to limit the zooming to, but instead, it does the following:

1. System Preferences > Accessibility > Zoom > Choose Display... > All
is the default setting and the only one that keeps my iPad as an extended desktop. However, as mentioned above, when I use control + mouse scroll, both screens zoom.

2. System Preferences > Accessibility > Zoom > Choose Display... > iMac
changes my iPad from an extended desktop to a mirrored desktop, and my iMac's resolution changes to the iPad's resolution. Using the Zoom function now shows the zoomed image on the iMac screen while the iPad screen remains unchanged.

3. System Preferences > Accessibility > Zoom > Choose Display... > Sidecar Display
changes my iPad from an extended desktop to a mirrored desktop and my iPad's resolution changes to the iMac's resolution. Using the Zoom function now shows the zoomed image on the iPad screen while the iMac screen remains unchanged.

I DON'T WANT ANY OF THOSE OPTIONS!

What I want is to keep the iPad as my extended desktop and ONLY zoom in on the display in which my mouse cursor is located. Is there ANY way to do this? Seems like such a natural, simple thing, but I can't seem to make it work.

 

[Slydude]

I feel your pain on this one. I'm not using Sidecar but the same thing occurs when a second monitor is attached and the system is in extended mode. I work that way all the time.

The only thing I can think of is to choose a different Zoom style in the Accessibility preference pane. Instead of magnifying the full screen maybe Picture In Picture will be more to your liking. Some of those features can be adjusted a bit.

The Monterey beta has a setting that allows one to choose which monitor to magnify but it seems to then force both monitors into mirrored screen mode so I'm not fond of that.

 

[usagora]

The only thing I can think of is to choose a different Zoom style in the Accessibility preference pane. Instead of magnifying the full screen maybe Picture In Picture will be more to your liking. Some of those features can be adjusted a bit.

I'll play around with it when I get home today and report back, but I really prefer the full-screen zoom.

The Monterey beta has a setting that allows one to choose which monitor to magnify but it seems to then force both monitors into mirrored screen mode so I'm not fond of that.

Isn't that the same thing in Big Sur (which is my current OS) that I show at the end of the video and describe at the end of the narrative: System Preferences > Accessibility > Zoom > Choose Display... ?

In one sense, I can understand why the Zoom (at least the full-screen Zoom...like I said, I'll try the other modes tonight) would zoom both displays, since the extended desktop is an extension of the primary desktop, and both together can be thought of as a contiguous whole, but users often want things isolated to one or the other, and this ought to include Zoom. The system obviously recognizes two distinct displays, so that should be easy to program into the OS.

 

[Slydude]

I'd have replied sooner but I had to boot into Big Sur to check on something.

Big Sur does indeed have the setting to adjust the size of the "magnifying glass" if one enters picture-in-picture magnification mode. Thanks for reminding me about that. I'd either forgotten that or never noticed it before. That might make picture-in-picture more palatable for me.

The Monterey beta uses the same system and that part of things seems to work as it does in Big Sur. The change in Monterey is that there is a means of explicitly defining which display you want to apply magnification to. As far as I can tell that option is not present in Big Sur though I may be wrong on that score.

The problem I encountered earlier mis that applying magnification to one screen seemed to kick the setup into mirrored mode with one screen magnified and the other with an unmagnified mirror of the screen. I can see why that would be useful but for now I'd prefer to have a choice about that. I need to do some additional testing to see if perhaps I have missed a setting somewhere.

 

[usagora]

The problem I encountered earlier mis that applying magnification to one screen seemed to kick the setup into mirrored mode with one screen magnified and the other with an unmagnified mirror of the screen.

Yes, precisely.

I'll give the picture-in-picture mode a try tonight and see if I can live with it. Thanks!

 

[Slydude]

Big Sur has always magnified both screens when the user chooses full screen as the magnification option. Since Monterey seems to give you the option to control which screen is magnified, I'm hoping that there's a way to tell it to keep magnification on the second display at its current state.

 

[usagora]

Big Sur has always magnified both screens when the user chooses full screen as the magnification option. Since Monterey seems to give you the option to control which screen is magnified, I'm hoping that there's a way to tell it to keep magnification on the second display at its current state.

I sure hope so too!

 

[MacInWin]

Big Sur has always magnified both screens when the user chooses full screen as the magnification option.

Just to be clear, that may be true for SideCar (I don't use it), but it is not generically true of external monitors. I have an external monitor, but the two devices are set up in System Preferences/Mission Control with "Displays have separate Spaces" and only one will zoom at a time. As I said, I don't know how SideCar works, but for external monitors you can have just one magnify.

 

[Slydude]

I hadn't thought of that possibility Jake. Its been a long time since I used Mission Control/Spaces.

If one has a second display attached and aren't using Spaces things seem to get a little wonky, If one chooses to magnify the full screen, content on both displays gets magnified. That's what the OP seems to be trying to avoid.

If magnification is taken high enough content from the primary display will appear partially on one display and partially on the second.

I'm going to have to do some experimentation to see if the additional options in Monterrey provide finer control. I'm also going too try your suggestions and see how that affects things.

 

[MacInWin]

To be honest, Sly, I don't know why anybody would set up external monitors and NOT use the separate Spaces option. I can drag/drop from one screen to the other have separate applications open on the separate screens and use all that lovely desktop space. For example, right now I have Safari open to nearly full screen (not really, just most of the screen, on my MBP, then on the external I have Messages, Mail, Calendar, Outlook and Activity Monitor open, arranged so I can see all of them in full window. That is my default setup. I also have a second Space on the MBP that I can get to by swiping on the trackpad, but that does not change the external monitor at all. The only activity I can see that changes the external is when I use AirPlay. The displays shift to mirrored in that case. That I find annoying, but I don't use AirPlay that much.

 

[usagora]

Just to be clear, that may be true for SideCar (I don't use it), but it is not generically true of external monitors. I have an external monitor, but the two devices are set up in System Preferences/Mission Control with "Displays have separate Spaces" and only one will zoom at a time. As I said, I don't know how SideCar works, but for external monitors you can have just one magnify.

Oh, this sounds promising! There's no reason it shouldn't work with Sidecar, since the OS treats the iPad as an external display. I wasn't using Spaces - just dragging applications from my iMac display to the extended iPad display. I'll give it a try again tonight by moving the apps I want on the iPad to their own Space first.

Thanks!

 

[usagora]

Just to be clear, that may be true for SideCar (I don't use it), but it is not generically true of external monitors. I have an external monitor, but the two devices are set up in System Preferences/Mission Control with "Displays have separate Spaces" and only one will zoom at a time. As I said, I don't know how SideCar works, but for external monitors you can have just one magnify.

Well, unfortunately this does NOT work with Sidecar. I'm going to try to test this with an external monitor tomorrow, because I can't imagine why it would be any different, since the iPad shows up as separate display in System Preferences. Also, the "Displays have separate Spaces" options is checked by default in Big Sur and I verified that the iPad shows as "Desktop 2".

The crazy thing is that the "Split Screen" and "Picture in Picture" options DO work like I want the "Full Screen" Zoom to work - where the zoomed image only shows on the display your mouse pointer is currently on, but both of these Zoom styles have other problems. The problem with the "Split Screen" style is that there's no way to manually adjust the zoomed image to be the full screen - it appears to let you do so, but as soon as you activate Zoom again, it resizes to about 80% of the screen and the bottom section of the screen is the non-zoomed view, which is very distracting/disorienting to me. The problem with "Picture in Picture" zoom style is that even though you CAN manually adjust the zoomed image to be the full screen, as soon as your mouse pointer enters the extended desktop area (on the iPad), the zoomed image size resets to a tiny square.

I can't believe such a simple thing is not possible on such a powerful operating system!

 

[usagora]

Just to be clear, that may be true for SideCar (I don't use it), but it is not generically true of external monitors. I have an external monitor, but the two devices are set up in System Preferences/Mission Control with "Displays have separate Spaces" and only one will zoom at a time. As I said, I don't know how SideCar works, but for external monitors you can have just one magnify.

Hi, Jake. Well, I brought home an external monitor today to test this out, but it behaves the same way as the iPad does when it's acting as an extended desktop (both displays zoom simultaneously). I'd sure like to know why your external monitor doesn't behave like mine do. Are you using macOS 11.4? "Displays have separate Spaces" is definitely checked under my System Preferences > Mission Control, so there must be some other setting you have enabled that I don't. And I verified the external monitor is a separate space - iMac shows as "Desktop 1" and external monitor shows as "Desktop 2"

Also, I tried this with the external monitor connected to either my iMac or MacBook Air . . . same results.

 

[MacInWin]

My profile has the details of my system. I am on 11.4. Here are screenshots of my System Preferences screens. As far as I know, these are all of the controls for the Spaces and Zoom.

 

[usagora]

My profile has the details of my system. I am on 11.4. Here are screenshots of my System Preferences screens. As far as I know, these are all of the controls for the Spaces and Zoom.

I notice you have neither "Use keyboard shortcuts to zoom" nor "Use scroll gesture with modifier keys to zoom" selected. So how are you even activating the Zoom feature? I have "Use scroll gesture with modifier keys to zoom" selected with the "^ Control" key option.

Otherwise, our settings are identical.

 

[MacInWin]

Hover text. Hold down CMD key, move cursor to text you need to expand. No need to use keyboard shortcuts or any other. I also use two-finger spread in Safari to spread the Safari window.

 

[usagora]

Hover text. Hold down CMD key, move cursor to text you need to expand. No need to use keyboard shortcuts or any other. I also use two-finger spread in Safari to spread the Safari window.

It appears we've been on two different wavelengths the entire time. That's not at all what I want to do. I want to zoom in on any portion of the FULL screen, whether text, image, or anything else - just like I showed in the video in my OP. I don't want merely a text pop-up like Hover Text. Like, right now I'm zoomed in as I'm typing this reply to you. Here, let me take a picture...



So the problem is as I'm zoomed in like that on my iMac screen, any external display is ALSO zoomed in to the same zoom factor, even though I'm not intending to zoom in on any content on those displays. So, I might want to reference something on that other display as I type, but I can't see it because it's zoomed in.

 

[MacInWin]

OK, I'll drop out, then. Never use that zoom. See no reason to use it. Zoom text is about all I ever use.

 

[usagora]

See no reason to use it.

Because I often want to quickly get a close view of anything on my screen and it helps me focus. This is literally one of my favorite features of macOS and I've used it constantly on a daily basis for as long as I can remember.

I appreciate you trying to help though, Jake. I still hope to find a solution to this one day

 

[MacInWin]

You might look for something that zooms around the mouse cursor. As it is, you either have to zoom ALL displays, or all displays have to be identical to zoom just one of them. I seem to remember something that zoomed in where the cursor was, but last time I saw that was a few years ago.