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I have a particular application that has extremely small detail for some of its controls, and no way to zoom anything larger. I find that the accessibility feature "temporary zoom" works great for allowing me to just momentarily pop a magnifying glass up to see the detail, then let go of the keys to go back to normal.

The problem is that I can't also interact with anything while the magnifier is up, because the shortcut for Temporary Zoom is ⌃ ctrl+⌥ option and does not appear to be able to be changed. So whenever I click, I get a context menu instead of interacting with the underlying control.

Is there any way to map the Temporary Zoom shortcut, to something other than using ⌃ ctrl ?

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  • Are you using some 3rd-party utility for this feature? If you go into System Preferences/Accessibility/Zoom/Use scroll gesture… you can only choose Control OR Option OR Command. At System Preferences/Keyboard/Shortcuts/Accessibility/Turn zoom on or off, you can't set only modifier keys without including a 'normal' key too. – biziclop Jan 25 '14 at 20:16
  • No 3rd party utility. I'm not referring to the scroll gesture. Click on More Options in that dialog, and you'll see the Enable Temporary Zoom option. That is what I'm using, and doesn't seem to allow for not using Control. – JVC Jan 25 '14 at 20:41
  • I see, it shows up only when using Zoom Style: Picture-in-picture. In this case, maybe you could redefine the default 3-key toggle zoom shortcut (Opt-Cmd-8 I think) to some unused single key, like F19, or the NumLock key. – biziclop Jan 25 '14 at 22:05
  • The problem is I want to be able to keep my right hand on the mouse, while my left hand triggers the zoom, so that I can instantly interact with the control the cursor is positioned over. Having to hit CMD-OPT-8 doesn't really allow me to do that, I could map that to a simpler left-hand-only shortcut, but really the temporary zoom is exactly the feature I want to use, I just need to make it not use the Control key. – JVC Jan 26 '14 at 2:13
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I found a limited solution: Install free BetterTouchTool from http://blog.boastr.net Go to Gestures/Normal Mice, click Add New Button, set Left Click, check ctrl and option modifiers. At right, choose Predefined Action called Mouse Click Actions / More Mouse Buttons & Modifiers, and simply choose Left Mouse Button (see attached image). Save, close the BTT window, and try left-clicking. Unfortunately clicking is the only thing you can do, for example you can't click+drag (at least it didn't work for me).

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  • Was worth a shot, especially since I already use BTT. Unfortunately for me, I get no functionality on click at all after using this approach. Not even a standard left click... I don't get the context menu anymore, but nothing else either. – JVC Jan 27 '14 at 4:33
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    Sorry to hear that. Maybe you could try the demo version of ControllerMate (drag-and-drop interface) or writing a custom command for the free KeyRemap4MacBook. – biziclop Jan 27 '14 at 15:04

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