Desktop zooming
Desktop zooming can be used to magnify the desktop to aid in viewing and interacting with a display. It works similarly to the Smart Magnifier feature, but instead applies to the entire display.
Zooming can be controlled with three gesture actions:
Zoom whole screen: this gesture action toggles screen zooming on and off, zooming in to the specified magnification level when activated, and zooming out all the way when deactivated. It can optionally also be set to always zoom in or zoom out. It can be assigned to any gesture, though we recommend one of the various tap gestures.
Adjust screen zoom: this action zooms the screen in and out continuously while the gesture is performed. It works most intuitively with one of the pinch / expand gestures, but can also be used with a swipe or rotate gesture.
Move zoomed screen: this action pans around the screen when it's zoomed in, allowing you to control which part of the screen is visible. It can be assigned to any drag or press gesture. Note that this gesture action has no effect when the screen is not zoomed in.
It's not necessary to assign all of these actions to a gesture in order to use desktop zooming; you can use just "Zoom whole screen" or "Adjust screen zoom" if you prefer, though the feature is most useful when all three are used.
Note: Earlier versions of UPDD Commander leveraged macOS's built-in Accessibility zooming feature, but later versions now use its own feature, so it's no longer necessary to change any System Settings in order to use screen zooming.
Zooming nomenclature
With UPDD Commander 1.14.0 we have tried to make a makes a clear distinction between whether you're zooming something in a window, such as in Safari or Maps, vs. zooming the entire screen in and out using our own screen zooming feature.
To this end, in this version we trust the name of some of the gesture actions now make them more clear, rather than relying on the official names of the actions that Apple uses in their settings and documentation.
"Zoom" is now "Zoom window contents".
This is the action that's equivalent to doing a pinch / expand gesture on an Apple trackpad.
"Rotate" is now "Rotate window contents" to be consistent with "Zoom window contents".
This action is equivalent of rotating with two fingers on an Apple trackpad.
"Smart Zoom" is now "Auto-zoom window contents"
This is the action that's equivalent to double tapping with two fingers on an Apple trackpad.
"Zoom window" is now "Enlarge window".
This is equivalent to double clicking a window's title bar, or option clicking the green + button in the upper left corner of all windows.
"Zoom screen" is now "Adjust screen zoom".
This action is for our own screen zooming feature and allows zooming in and out, as described above.
It also has a new action, named "Zoom whole screen" and "Move zoomed screen", also described above.