Windows Phone 8 Tip: Use the Screen Magnifier

Zoom in anywhere in Windows Phone 8

Related to yesterday’s tip about increasing the text size in Windows Phone 8 is a new screen magnifier feature that helps you zoom into any area of the screen and pan around for a closer look. But this isn’t something you’ll enable and leave on. Instead, you can use it on the fly as needed.

As with the text size feature, you enable the screen magnifier in Ease of Access settings.

When the feature is enabled nothing happens immediately. But now you have a new screen magnification capability.

Zoom. To zoom in, double-tap the screen with two fingers.

Pan. To move around the screen while zoomed, use two fingers instead of one.

Change the zoom level. By default, the screen magnifier doubles the size of onscreen elements. But you can change the zoom level at any time while in the zoom view by double tapping with two fingers and holding; then, pan up or down on the screen to zoom in further (up) or out (down).

Exit zoom. To exit the screen magnifier, just double-tap the screen with two fingers again.

Discuss this Article 10

gkeramidas
on Feb 14, 2013

i hasppened to play with this yesterday, and double tapping was not exiting. i had a hell of a time trying to get back to the setting to turn it off.

digeratti
on Feb 14, 2013

FYI, to zoom in you need to double tap with *two* fingers. Not one.

SpatialFX
on Feb 14, 2013

I will say that at least on the L920, if you notice a little lag on the screen, turn magnifier off. It seems to be a bit behind even if the zoom level is 1x.

SpatialFX
on Feb 14, 2013

I will say that at least on the L920, if you notice a little lag on the screen, turn magnifier off. It seems to be a bit behind even if the zoom level is 1x.

IanYates82
on Feb 14, 2013

Oh wow - you've answered my question from the "text size bigger" post. I would've never though to two-finger-double-tap my phone, but the 3yr old certainly does when the phone's not doing what she wants and she gets impatient :P

Now I know how to turn it off, and learnt about a cool feature. Thanks very much!!

dstrait
on Feb 14, 2013

Although I didn't specifically ask for a magnifier for Window Phone I did suggest through Microsoft's User Voice site in 2011 that a high contrast setting would help old people like my parents. I would like to think this had something to do with the accessibility options, including font size adjustments, that my parents are getting in WP8.

http://windowsphone.uservoice.com/forums/101801-feature-suggestions/sugg...

mod6538
on Feb 15, 2013

@dstrait, Hmm, what's your point exactly? There is a High Contrast option in WP8.. so should we be thanking you, or what?

neonspark
on Feb 15, 2013

only Microsoft would have "contrast" mode in a phone OS that is already black and white....

Mortarm
on Feb 15, 2013

Excellent. Glad to see they got both magnify and high contrast. Does this apply to Surface as well?

mod6538
on Feb 15, 2013

Grrr. I zoomed in, but can't eother pan (using two fingers) or zoom out. What's the trick? ... Rebooted and set "Screen magnifier" to OFF. Enough time wasted on this.

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