How to make the macos finder suck less
Finder is your window to the Mac file system. Every time you open Finder, it defaults to the Recents folder. But if you usually save your work in a different folder, you might want to change the button’s default behavior.
First, open the Finder app by clicking on the button in the Dock that looks like a face. From the menu bar, click on the “Finder” option. Next, click on “Preferences.” Alternatively, you can use the “Command+,” (Command key and the comma) keyboard shortcut to quickly open the Preferences window.
In this window, select the “General” tab and then locate “New Finder Window Show.” Click on the drop-down menu below the option.
From here, you can select from a list of pre-defined options. You’ll find the iCloud Drive, Desktop, and Documents folders here.
You can also click on the “Other” option and choose any folder from the file directory (for instance, the Downloads folder).
Browse through the file directory and select the folder you want as the default. Then click on the “Choose” button.
You’ll be taken back to the Preferences menu with your selection as the new default folder for the Finder app. The next time you open the Finder app, it will open whichever folder you selected.
Now that you’ve improved your Finder opening experience, take a look at some other ways to make Finder suck less on macOS.
So, are you experiencing this weird issue with Finder on your Mac? It’s super slow to open folders, sometimes not responding, even worse, it keeps crashing randomly.
This kind of Mac Finder problem is frustrating. And lots of fellow Mac users have reported this issue after updating Mac to the latest macOS.
Fortunately, it is generally an easy fix as long as you pinpoint the culprit. However, the process may not be as easy as it sounds. Sometimes it’s much time-consuming identifying the cause rather than resolving it.
In this article, we are going to show you a few common reasons and fixes to help you tackle the Finder problem.
Note: to make it easier for you, we break down the solutions into two situations (see below).
Table of Contents
Situation #1: Finder is Slow But Still Usable
This scenario applies to those of you who can use Finder to open folders or access files, but the process becomes much slower than usual. Here are the common causes and solutions.
1. Your Mac is Running Out of Storage
In general, it’s a good practice to make sure your Mac disk has at least 20% free space available to use. Otherwise, your Mac may suffer performance issues. To check storage usage, click on the Apple logo on the top left of your screen, and select About This Mac, then click the Storage tab. Here you get a quick overview of the storage via the colorful bar.
How to fix it: if your Mac doesn’t have enough storage, the easiest way to free up more disk space is by using CleanMyMac — an app that helps quickly detect and remove system junk and unnecessary files.
We also recommend using CCleaner to locate those large old files and delete those you don’t need. You can also use this app to find duplicate files if you are used to storing multiple copies of backups and photos on your Mac.
Clean your Mac as much as you can to reclaim more free disk space, as this helps improve the overall performance of your Mac. Plus, the Finder slow issue can disappear too.
2. Spotlight is Indexing
This usually happens when your Mac has updated to a newer macOS (e.g. 10.13 High Sierra). Other times when you just finished transferring a large number of files from an external drive to your Mac. In this case, the Spotlight often needs to index all new files for you to search. However, the process usually takes quite a while to complete. During the Spotlight indexing process, your Mac is likely to run slowly, heat up, and the Finder app will lag as well.
How to know if Spotlight is indexing files? Just click the search icon on the top right corner, type any file name, and see if there is an “indexing…” status message showing up.
If you don’t want to wait, you can either turn off Spotlight or exclude some items from indexing. Learn how to do that with the step-by-step instructions MacObserver introduced.
3. Problematic Finder Preference Files
In some cases, the preferences files associated with the Finder app could corrupt or break — causing Mac Finder to misbehave. To fix that, the best way is to delete Finder Preferences.
How to do that? Follow these steps…
/Library/Preferences/” in the Spotlight bar, and click the “TOP HIT” result to open the Preferences folder.
Step 2: In the new window, locate this file “com.apple.finder.plist”, right-click and select “Move to Trash.”
Step 3: Now close the folder and restart your Mac.
Note: It’s harmless to delete a .plist file because, after reboot, your Mac will regenerate the Finder preference file itself.
Situation #2: Finder is Not Responding at All
This scenario is best for when the Finder app on your Mac is not responding or becomes inaccessible. You’ll have to operate via Terminal command to delete the preference file to fix it.
Here’s a step-by-step guide:
1. Open the Terminal app. You can either do a quick Spotlight search or find the app under Applications > Utilities and open it.
2. Delete the primary Finder preferences file. At the Terminal prompt, type the following command exactly as written and press Return key on your Mac.
3. Now restart your Mac for the change to take effect.
In general, we don’t recommend you do so on your own if you are not comfortable using the command line. It’s best to have a geek friend assist you during the process because any misoperation could cause unexpected issues.
Final Words
The Finder not responding issue can be very annoying as we are used to relying on the app to access files and folders. But the problem does happen now and then, particularly when you just upgraded your Mac to a newer macOS version.
By the way, if you are new to Mac, learning about the Finder will help you better organize and manage your Mac files. Check out this Apple support article for more information.
We hope you find the above troubleshooting guide helpful and hopefully you have fixed the problem. If you have any questions regarding the issue, leave a comment and let us know.
Chris is a lifelong tech enthusiast with a broad range of interests including coding, data analysis, traveling, and more. He used to work as a software programmer immersing himself in the world of codes, now he finds it more interesting talking to real people.
HeliAnimal
Registered
nixgeek
Mac of the SubGenius! 🙂
Mikuro
Crotchety UI Nitpicker
Just a few very quick things, because I don’t want to get into a big rant (it’s one of those rare occasions ):
The Finder insists on forcing its metal mode on me under seemingly random circumstances. After years of wrestling with it, yes, I can finally predict when it will open with metal and when it will respect my wishes. But it’s complicated. Very complicated. And there is NO WAY (AFAIK) to get CD windows to appear with the aqua mode.
The underlying cause of the metal-aqua confusion is that in OS X, folders are no longer tied to their windows. You can have a folder open in a dozen different windows, each with their own views. Which view options will “stick”? And under what circumstances? Well. it depends. It is certainly not intuitive or simple.
File search in Tiger is awful. Just. awful. Spotlight is riddled with bugs, and the Finder’s implementation of Spotlight is hackish, weak, difficult to use, and even buggier than it needs to be given the core of Spotlight. (Panther’s search was a dream in comparison.) Furthermore, there’s no easy way to search the contents of a folder. If I want to do that, I need to first switch to metal mode, then enter a search term to magically change my folder window to a search results window (!?) which will have the options I need. By default, the new search results window is NOT limited to the folder, as I obviously want it to be, but to my whole disk, or the last place I searched, or who-knows-what. As with the metal-vs-aqua problem, this is not consistent, not simple, and just not predictable to any normal person.
File-application linking is handled in many different ways. Not all of them are smart. I’m already ranting too much, so I’ll leave details for another day.
There’s no way to get a new folder to be created in list view. Until OS X, the Finder was smart enough to make new folders inherit all the view options of their parent. But again, OS X tries to sever that folder-window connection (albeit inconsistently. which really just makes things more confusing. ), so I guess this was deemed impossible at some point and nobody ever revisited it. *sigh*
The icon grid is ridiculously large. It makes icon view a chore to use. The classic Finder had a 32×32-pixel icon grid. Yes, with file names you could not REALLY put your icons that close together, but it didn’t matter. It was smart enough to use the space sensibly. OS X forces a 128×128 grid, and this doesn’t change with the icon size you specify. And when you change the icon size of a window, chances are your icon arrangement will be ruined.
Speaking of the icon grid, it constantly gets “jostled”, suddenly making my neatly-arranged icons non-aligned. This happens all the time when you drag files from one window to another, especially if scrolling is involved. And the Finder’s “clean up” command never seems to just shift everything back over; it always throws icons into seemingly-random places, sometimes not even respecting the width of the window.
The green expand box is very buggy. Try this: Click the expand box in a window, then move an icon slightly outside its bounds. Click it again. Did it expand to fit all the icons again? No! It reverted to the last size. The same thing happens in list view when you resize columns. (Edit: I actually just tried this and it worked as it should in icon view, although not list view. I know the problem exists in icon view as well, but I guess that’s not the way to consistently reproduce it.)
And of course, it’s missing a lot of features from the OS 8/9 Finder, like pop-up windows, and non-drag-based spring-loaded folders.
Okay, I ended up ranting a bit more than I wanted. I just can’t help it, I guess.
Oh, the Finder. It’s been Apple’s default file browser on the Mac since it was called Macintosh, and users have been complaining about it ever since. We can’t fix the Finder for you: no one can but Apple. We’re betting that doesn’t happen any time soon.
Having said that, we can point out a few ways to make Finder suck less, which honestly is about all you can ask for. Let’s get started.
See the Current File Path
By default, it’s hard to know the location of your current folder, which is more than a little confusing. But there are a few ways to make the current file path obvious The simplest: right-click the folder’s name and icon in the header window.
You’ll see the complete path to your current folder, in a dropdown menu.
Click any of these options to jump to a given folder.
If you’d rather the file path always be visible, instead of you having to click, you want the Path Bar. Click “View” in the menu bar, then click “View Path Bar.”
This will add a bar at the bottom of the window that shows you the full path of your current folder.
You can double-click any folder here to instantly jump to it. This is very useful, but there’s one downside: it’s wasting vertical space.
If you’d rather not have that extra bar there, you can replace the folder name at the top of the Finder with a complete file path. To do this, open the Terminal, which you’ll find in Applications > Utilities. Next, run this command:
defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool true; killall Finder
Just like that, you’ll see a complete file path in the Finder’s header.
These options all gives you the same thing, so just find one that works for you!
Search the Current Folder, Not the Whole System
The search bar in the Finder searches the entire system by default, even though most users expect it to search only the current folder. Turns out you can set the Finder to behave: just click Finder > Preferences in the menu bar, then head to the Advanced tab.
At the bottom of the window you’ll see a dropdown labeled “When performing a search,” make sure it’s set to “Search the Current Folder.”
Use Tabs
For a long time, adding tabs to Finder meant installing a third party software, or replacing the Finder entirely with some other application. Not anymore: as of OS X Yosemite, you can press Command+T in the Finder to open a new tab right away.
You can drag files from one tab to another easily, and you can “Pull” a tab away if you’re prefer separate instances. We’ve shown you how to add tabs to almost any Mac application, and the rules for the Finder work the same as for every other app, so check out that article for more details about how this works.
Make Certain Folders Open With Particular Styles
The Finder offers four “Views,” each suited to particular situations. You can see a list of them in the menu bar, under “View.”
There’s Icons, which arranges everything in the folder as a grid of icons.
There’s list, which shows the current folder in a simple list alongside the files’ properties.
There’s columns, lets you browse the file heiarchy by scrolling to the right, and also shows details for the selected file, and is the correct view to use all the time always:
And there’s cover flow, which is horrible and needs to go away forever:
There’s a chance you disagree with my completely accurate assessment above, and want particular folders to use particular views. Well, you can assign particular views to individual folders relatively simply. Check out the article and you can assign certain folders to open in the Icons or (shudder) Cover Flow views.
Quickly See or Hide Hidden Files
Viewing the various hidden files on your Mac system used to involve opening the Terminal, but these days all you need is a keyboard shortcut: Command+Shilft+Period. Just like that you can see all the hidden files on your Mac.
Sort Folders Above Files
If you’re coming from Windows, the Finder’s tendency to mix files and folders together in alphabetical order may be a touch confusing to you. Well, you can set Finder to sort folders above files, like Windows does, by clicking Finder > Preferences in the menu bar, then checking the “Advanced” tab.
The option is labeled “Keep folders on top while sorting by name,” just check it and you’re good to go.
Sort Applications by Category
Speaking of: if you’ve got a lot of things cluttering up your /Applications folder, you can sort your applications by category to make browsing just a little bit easier. Right-click your Applications folder, then click View > Show View Options in the menu bar, and you’ll find the option to arrange by category.
Customize the Sidebar
Finally, if you really want to make your Finder suck less, you need to dive in and customize the sidebar. If there are any icons there you don’t use regularly, remove them. If there are any folders you use frequently, add them.
To remove icons, head to Finder > Preferences in the menu bar, then click the Sidebar tab.
From here you can also re-add any default icons you’ve previously removed. Adding custom icons is simpler: just drag the folder to the sidebar and you’re done.
Oh, the Finder. It’s been Apple’s default file browser on the Mac since it was called Macintosh, and users have been complaining about it ever since. We can’t fix the Finder for you: no one can but Apple. We’re betting that doesn’t happen any time soon.
Having said that, we can point out a few ways to make Finder suck less, which honestly is about all you can ask for. Let’s get started.
See the Current File Path
By default, it’s hard to know the location of your current folder, which is more than a little confusing. But there are a few ways to make the current file path obvious The simplest: right-click the folder’s name and icon in the header window.
You’ll see the complete path to your current folder, in a dropdown menu.
Click any of these options to jump to a given folder.
If you’d rather the file path always be visible, instead of you having to click, you want the Path Bar. Click “View” in the menu bar, then click “View Path Bar.”
This will add a bar at the bottom of the window that shows you the full path of your current folder.
You can double-click any folder here to instantly jump to it. This is very useful, but there’s one downside: it’s wasting vertical space.
If you’d rather not have that extra bar there, you can replace the folder name at the top of the Finder with a complete file path. To do this, open the Terminal, which you’ll find in Applications > Utilities. Next, run this command:
defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool true; killall Finder
Just like that, you’ll see a complete file path in the Finder’s header.
These options all gives you the same thing, so just find one that works for you!
Search the Current Folder, Not the Whole System
The search bar in the Finder searches the entire system by default, even though most users expect it to search only the current folder. Turns out you can set the Finder to behave: just click Finder > Preferences in the menu bar, then head to the Advanced tab.
At the bottom of the window you’ll see a dropdown labeled “When performing a search,” make sure it’s set to “Search the Current Folder.”
Use Tabs
For a long time, adding tabs to Finder meant installing a third party software, or replacing the Finder entirely with some other application. Not anymore: as of OS X Yosemite, you can press Command+T in the Finder to open a new tab right away.
You can drag files from one tab to another easily, and you can “Pull” a tab away if you’re prefer separate instances. We’ve shown you how to add tabs to almost any Mac application, and the rules for the Finder work the same as for every other app, so check out that article for more details about how this works.
Make Certain Folders Open With Particular Styles
The Finder offers four “Views,” each suited to particular situations. You can see a list of them in the menu bar, under “View.”
There’s Icons, which arranges everything in the folder as a grid of icons.
There’s list, which shows the current folder in a simple list alongside the files’ properties.
There’s columns, lets you browse the file heiarchy by scrolling to the right, and also shows details for the selected file, and is the correct view to use all the time always:
And there’s cover flow, which is horrible and needs to go away forever:
There’s a chance you disagree with my completely accurate assessment above, and want particular folders to use particular views. Well, you can assign particular views to individual folders relatively simply. Check out the article and you can assign certain folders to open in the Icons or (shudder) Cover Flow views.
Quickly See or Hide Hidden Files
Viewing the various hidden files on your Mac system used to involve opening the Terminal, but these days all you need is a keyboard shortcut: Command+Shilft+Period. Just like that you can see all the hidden files on your Mac.
Sort Folders Above Files
If you’re coming from Windows, the Finder’s tendency to mix files and folders together in alphabetical order may be a touch confusing to you. Well, you can set Finder to sort folders above files, like Windows does, by clicking Finder > Preferences in the menu bar, then checking the “Advanced” tab.
The option is labeled “Keep folders on top while sorting by name,” just check it and you’re good to go.
Sort Applications by Category
Speaking of: if you’ve got a lot of things cluttering up your /Applications folder, you can sort your applications by category to make browsing just a little bit easier. Right-click your Applications folder, then click View > Show View Options in the menu bar, and you’ll find the option to arrange by category.
Customize the Sidebar
Finally, if you really want to make your Finder suck less, you need to dive in and customize the sidebar. If there are any icons there you don’t use regularly, remove them. If there are any folders you use frequently, add them.
To remove icons, head to Finder > Preferences in the menu bar, then click the Sidebar tab.
From here you can also re-add any default icons you’ve previously removed. Adding custom icons is simpler: just drag the folder to the sidebar and you’re done.
There’s more to your Mac’s display settings than just brightness.
Having a beautiful Retina display doesn’t do you any good if you can’t see what’s on it. Thankfully, MacOS has a number of settings to help you see more clearly what’s on your Mac’s screen, from making text and icons larger to increasing the contrast and reducing the transparency of windows.
1. Scaled resolution
For Macs with Retina displays, you can’t lower the native resolution to a specific resolution in order to increase the size of text and icons like you can on other laptops and displays. That’s never a great idea anyway because you lose sharpness in the bargain for larger, more legible letters. Retina displays offer what Apple calls “scaled resolutions” to bump up size of text and icons. Open System Preferences and go to Displays. On the Display tab, you’ll see two options at the top of the window for Resolution: Default for display and Scaled. Choose Scaled and, depending on the size of your Retina display, you’ll have four or five options. Choose one of the two options on the Larger Text side to make it easier to read what’s on your display.
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET
2. Increase text size
If you don’t have a Retina display, you can still make text bigger on an app-by-app basis.
Having troubling reading emails? Well, in the Mail app, you can bump up the font size by opening the Mail app and going to Mail > Preferences > Fonts & Colors and clicking the Select button next to Message font and choosing a font size larger than the default of 12.
Similarly, in the Messages app, go to Messages > Preferences > General and move the slider at the bottom for Text size to the right.
In many other apps, including both Chrome and Safari, you can increase text size (along with everything else) by hitting Command-Plus. You can then lower it by hitting Command-Minus. And to return to the normal zoom level, hit Command-Zero.
3. Increase desktop text and icons
If your desktop icons are too small to be useful, you can increase their size along with the text of their descriptions. Right-click on the desktop, choose Show View Options and you’ll get options for increasing Icon size and Text size. (You’ll find similar options for text and icons in Finder by opening a Finder window and clicking View in the menu bar and then choosing Show View Options.)
4. Increase pointer size
If you keep losing track of your Mac’s tiny cursor, you can make it bigger by going to System Preferences > Accessibility > Display and moving the slider to the right for Cursor size. (If you have the box checked for Shake mouse pointer to locate, then you just need to wiggle your mouse or your swipe your finger quickly back and forth on your MacBook’s ($639 at Amazon) trackpad to greatly increase its size briefly so you can get eyes on it.)
5. Brightness automation
Let MacOS adjust the brightness of your display based on ambient lighting by enabling auto-brightness. Go to System Preferences > Displays and on the Display back, check the box for Automatically adjust brightness.
6. Transparency and contrast settings
There are two settings on the Accessibility page of System Preferences worth checking out to see if they might work for you. Click Display from the left panel and then check the box for Increase contrast. It reduces transparency in windows and makes the borders of buttons, tabs and other items more legible. If the increasing contrast is too stark a change for you, then try checking the box for the setting right below it for Reduce transparency. It makes the semi-transparent headers of windows a solid gray.
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET
7. Night Shift
Staring at a blue screen before bed can shift your body’s natural clock and make it difficult to get a good night’s sleep. With Apple’s Night Shift feature, the colors of your display are shifted away from cold, harsh blues to the warmer end of the spectrum during the evening hours. To enable and schedule it, head to System Preferences > Displays and click the Night Shift tab. You can set it to come on from sunset to sunrise or manually set a time period for it to be active. You can then use the slider below to adjust the color temperature of the effect between less warm and more.
If there’s only one keyboard shortcut you should remember in Mac OS X it’s this: Go To Folder. We refer to this keyboard command so frequently here on OSXDaily that we just sort of assume everyone knows it, but it’s so useful and powerful that it’s worth making an individual post about it.
How to Use “Go To Folder” on Mac
You have two ways of accessing the Go To Folder function from the Mac OS X desktop and Finder:
- Go to the Finder of Mac OS if you have not done so already
- From the “Go” menu navigate down to “Go to Folder” ….or better yet…
- Hit Command+Shift+G from the Mac OS X desktop or a Finder window
Ideally, you’ll remember that keyboard shortcut of Command + Shift + G. It’s very powerful and becomes incredibly efficient once committed to memory and utilized to jump around the file system with ease.
Whether you just like to make customizations to Mac OS X, dig around in preference and cache files, go deep in system folders, or you want to navigate to complex directory path structures, this keyboard shortcut saves you a tremendous amount of time by allowing you to jump into paths in the Mac OS X file system without clicking around.
“Go To Folder” Tips
There are a few additional tips that are worth remembering when using the Go To Folder command: tab completion, and drag & drop support.
Use Tab Completion
Tab completion works like this, you start to type a directory path or filename and hit the Tab key to complete the text for you, preventing you from typing out the entire thing.
For example, if you want to navigate to /Users/YourName/Library/iTunes/ you can just do to this type /U (TAB) /Yo (TAB) /Li (TAB) /iT(TAB) where each time you hit the tab key the rest of the path will autocomplete. If you hear the system alert sound instead, that means there are other alternatives that start with the same first letters, so just type an additional letter in the sequence and hit tab.
We discussed tab completion a while ago but it’s worth mentioning again since it makes Command+Shift+G even speedier when digging deep.
Drag & Drop Support
The Go To window also supports drag and drop, so if you already have a folder open somewhere or you just want to quickly retrieve the full path of something, just drag and drop a directory or file into the Go To Folder window.
The full path will type out for you, which you can either go directly to or quickly copy and paste to provide to another user. This also works with network paths and mounted volumes, so if you wanted to provide someone on your LAN with a quickly accessible path to a file or directory, that drag & drop feature is all the more useful.
“Go To” Works in Save & Open Dialog Boxes Too
You can also use the “Go To” command from Save dialog boxes, so if you want to save or open a file from a long directory path, hit Command+Shift+G from an Open or Save window to bring it up.
Again, tab completion and drag and drop support works in here, and this is a much quicker way to access some directory paths than clicking around.
Is there a keyboard shortcut that is more useful than “Go To Folder”? I don’t think so, but let’s hear about it if there is one!
By Rob LeFebvre • 6:00 am, November 6, 2013
OS X Mavericks has been designed to optimize your Mac. Whether it’s an older Mac or a new one, a desktop or a laptop: Mavericks just makes everything work better.
One feature that helps in the effort to keep your battery from running out as fast as it could is App Nap, a way for your Macbook to put the apps that aren’t being actively used on a low-energy mode, which consumes less power, and helps your battery stay fuller, longer.
However, you can also turn this feature off for a specific app that you want to run at full power all the time.
Drop into the Finder with a click on the happy Finder face icon in your Dock, or use Command-Tab to make the Finder active. Then, open your Applications folder to select the app you’d like to turn off App Nap for.
Click on the app’s icon, and then hit Command-I to bring up the Get Info window for that app. Alternately, you can click on the File menu in the Finder, and choose “Get Info…”
Once the Get Info window shows up, you’ll see a checkbox near “Prevent App Nap” in the General section. You may need to click on the little disclosure triangle next to “General” to reveal it.
Click on the checkbox to keep the specified app from getting put into App Nap mode, and it will always run at full power.
Use Zoom on Mac or iOS devices to magnify text and images.
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Zoom is a screen magnification tool available on all Mac OS X and iOS products. It allows visually impaired users to more easily view or read text and images.
On Mac devices, Zoom is capable of magnifying on-screen content—including text, graphics, and video—to up to 40 times their original size. On iOS devices, it can magnify up to 15 times.
Zoom is controlled through keyboard and mouse commands on Mac and touch commands on iOS. Enlarged images maintain their original clarity and do not compromise system performance, even when playing video.
How to Use Zoom on a Mac
To activate Zoom on an iMac, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro:
Navigate to System Preferences. This can be accessed through the Apple menu in the top left-corner, or by typing “System Preferences” in Spotlight.
Select Accessibility.
Select Zoom from the Vision menu on the left.
Select Use keyboard shortcuts to zoom, if you’d like to use your keyboard to control the Zoom functions. Select Use scroll gesture with modifier keys too zoom, if you’d like to use your keyboard in combination a mouse or trackpad to zoom in and out.
Zoom Settings
You can set a magnification range to prevent images from becoming too large or too small when zoomed in or out. Select More Options. and then use the two slider scales to choose a minimum and maximum zoom range.
From the same menu, you can select from one of three ways that the zoom lens image will move while zoomed in:
- Select Continuously with pointer to have the zoom lens image tightly follow your mouse cursor.
- Select Only when the pointer reaches an edge to have the zoom lens image trail your mouse cursor, moving only when it reaches the edge of the lens image.
- Select So the pointer is at or near the center of the screen to have the zoom lens image move with your cursor, but not as tightly as with the first option.
How to Change the Mouse Cursor Size
Zoom can also enlarge the size of the mouse cursor to make it easier to see. From the Accessibility menu in System Preferences, select Display from the Vision menu on the left. Use the Cursor size slider to adjust the size of the cursor. Whatever size you choose will remain even after you log out, restart, or shut down the device.
How to Use Zoom on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch
Zoom can be used on iOS devices as well, though the magnification range is much smaller.
Read the instructions for how to operate Zoom before turning it on, as the transition can be jarring.
On your iOS device, select Settings > Accessibility > Zoom
Toggle the Zoom button to activate Zoom.
With Zoom on, double-tap with three fingers to zoom in. To zoom further, double-tap and then drag three fingers up or down. You can move around the screen by dragging three fingers. To move the zoom lens image faster, flick rather than drag your three fingers.
All of the standard iOS gestures — tap, flick, pinch, and rotate — still work while the screen is magnified.
For typing, you can select Follow Focus to make the zoom lens image follow the text cursor as you type.
The Zoom menu features a number of other settings and options, including the maximum zoom level.
You cannot use Zoom and VoiceOver screen reader at the same time. If you use a wireless keyboard to control your iOS device, the enlarged image follows the mouse cursor, keeping it in the center of the lens.
