Change Magnifier View in Windows 10

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How to Change Magnifier View in Windows 10

Magnifier is an accessibility tool bundled with Windows 10. When enabled, Magnifier makes part or all of your screen bigger so you can see words and images better. Magnifier supports a number of views you can switch to. Here's how.

Every modern Windows version comes with accessibility options. They are included so people with impaired vision, hearing, speech or other challenges find it easier to work with Windows. Accessibility features improve with every release.

Magnifier is one of the classic accessibility tools that allows you to temporarily enlarge a portion of the screen in Windows 10. Formerly known as Microsoft Magnifier, it creates a bar at the top of the screen that greatly magnifies where the mouse pointer is.

In Windows 10, you can use different methods to start and stop Magnifier. Also, you can start it automatically before you sign in to your user account.

Windows Magnifier Views

Magnifier supports three different views.

  • Full screen view magnifies the entire screen. You won’t be able to see the whole screen at the same time when it’s magnified, but as you move around the screen, you can see everything.
  • Lens view is like moving a magnifying glass around the screen. You can change the size of the lens in Magnifier settings.
  • Docked view works on the desktop. In this view, Magnifier is anchored to a portion of your screen. As you move around the screen, parts of the screen are magnified in the docking area, even though the main part of the screen is unchanged.

There are a number of ways to change the view of Magnifier. Let's review them.

To Change Magnifier View in Windows 10,

  1. Open Magnifier.
  2. Press the following keys for which view you want to use.
      • Ctrl + Alt + M - Cycle through views
      • Ctrl + Alt + F - Full screen
      • Ctrl + Alt + L - Lens
      • Ctrl + Alt + D - Docked
  3. You are done.

Alternatively, you can use the app's toolbar.

Change Magnifier View Using Toolbar

  1. Open Magnifier.
  2. Click on the View item.
  3. From the drop-down menu, select either Full screen, Lens, or Docked view for what you want to use.
  4. You are done.

Also, you can set the default Magnifier view in Settings.

Change Magnifier View from Settings

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Go to Ease of Access > Magnifier.
  3. On the right, choose a view (Full screen, Lens, or Docked) you want to use in the drop menu under the Change Magnifier view section.
  4. You can now close Settings.

Finally, you can apply a Registry tweak to set the desired Magnifier view.

Change Magnifier View in Registry

  1. Open the Registry Editor app.
  2. Go to the following Registry key.
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\ScreenMagnifier
    See how to go to a Registry key with one click.
  3. On the right, modify or create a new 32-bit DWORD value MagnificationMode.
    Note: Even if you are running 64-bit Windows you must still create a 32-bit DWORD value.
  4. Set its value data as follows:
    • 1 = Docked
    • 2 = Full screen
    • 3 = Lens
  5. To make the changes done by the Registry tweak take effect, you may need to sign out and sign in to your user account.

You can save your time by downloading the following Registry files.

Download Registry Files

The undo tweak is included.

That's it.

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Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

One thought on “Change Magnifier View in Windows 10”

  1. Thanks very much, Sergey. I didn’t know about Magnifier, and I need it because my vision is not so good recently.

    Such a simple thing, but please keep posting obvious things like this as well as your excellent tricky stuff.

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