GNOME Magnifier
The screen magnifier built into the GNOME desktop. Nothing to install, and it is switched on in Accessibility settings.
Our verdict
This is not a separate program. Magnification on GNOME is part of the desktop, sitting in Settings under Accessibility and Zoom, and you turn it on with a switch. The accessibility icon in the top bar toggles it again afterwards without going back into settings.
What you get is respectable: a magnification factor you choose, control over whether the view follows the mouse, a choice of where the magnified region sits on screen, optional crosshairs to help you find the pointer, and colour filters including inverted video. For a lot of people with low vision that is the whole job, at no cost and with no licence to renew.
What you do not get is ZoomText. There is no per-application profile, no reading tools bundled in, and no vendor to ring. If you need magnification and speech together, you run this with Orca, and the two are configured in different places.
Other desktops have their own version of this. Cinnamon and KDE both include zoom, and the controls sit elsewhere and behave differently. Try the magnifier on the desktop you intend to use, from a live USB session, rather than assuming the GNOME description applies.
What's good
- Already part of the desktop, so there is nothing to download or buy
- Magnification factor, mouse tracking and the position of the magnified area are all adjustable
- Crosshairs can be turned on, with the length, colour and thickness set to suit you
- Colour filters include inverted video and brightness and contrast adjustment
What to know first
- It magnifies only, so reading aloud means running Orca alongside it
- Nothing like ZoomText's app-specific settings or its reading tools
- Cinnamon, Xfce and KDE have their own zoom features that behave differently, so the experience moves with the desktop
- Text can look soft at high magnification because the screen image is being enlarged, not redrawn
The details
- Cost
- Free
- Open source
- Yes (GPL-2.0-or-later)
- How you install it
- Built-in app store
Windows apps it can replace
Last checked . Sources: