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So my eyes are terrible and I'm in a coding bootcamp where the instructors don't zoom in their coding environments to make the code readable to people with terrible eyes such as myself.

Edit: The coding environment is being viewed through the Zoom communication app through a screenshare.

I found the PiP function on mac which would work, if it didn't follow my mouse around. Is there a way to just have a magnified box on the screen and not have it follow my mouse? Are there any other applications I can download (hopefully free) that have this functionality?

I would even take zooming into my main screen since I have 2 screens, but it doesn't work as expected (it duplicates the main macbook screen to my second screen). I tried poking around the advanced settings but I don't think there is anything that disables that functionality that I toggled on/off.

At this point I've been googling for quite a while and I haven't found any solutions to this issue.

Set
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  • Here's Apple's doc on Zoom accessibility functions. It appears there's a built in method of detaching the zoom area from the mouse. Did you try that yet? https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-zoom-advanced-options-accessibility-mh35715/mac – music2myear Aug 01 '23 at 23:03
  • Temporarily doesn't really help since I kind of need two hands to type quickly lol. Plus it doesn't work, really. It says "detach from cursor" but it just changes it to a crosshair and still follows my mouse. – Set Aug 01 '23 at 23:41
  • What are you viewing this 'coding environment' in? If it's a browser or text editor then you can zoom the page itself with Cmd/+ – Tetsujin Aug 02 '23 at 07:02
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    The coding environment is being viewed through the Zoom communication app through a screenshare. I do use CMD/+ - for my own IDE, but I have no control over the instructors' IDEs of course. – Set Aug 02 '23 at 14:30
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    "I would even take zooming into my main screen since I have 2 screens" - You might be able to get this effect by changing the display resolution, rather than using the accessibility zoom. System Preferences > Displays > Select an option more on the Larger Text side. You might be able to get more resolution options by clicking the "Advanced..." button at the bottom and enabling "Show resolutions as a list" at the top of the popup. – 8bittree Aug 02 '23 at 16:02
  • Yeah I figured that might be what it came down to unfortunately. I'll probably do that then. Kinda sucks but I had a choice to use my mac or my pc and I used my mac. Thanks for the assistance people. – Set Aug 02 '23 at 16:10
  • Of course, another potential solution is to just ask the instructors to enlarge the text on their end. A good instructor should be willing to accommodate reasonable accessibility requests. – 8bittree Aug 02 '23 at 16:11
  • Agreed, they reset their environments after every session and I'm the only person in a class of 30 asking, so it kind of doesn't feel great. Figured I'd try to fix the situation myself, but, oh well. – Set Aug 02 '23 at 16:13
  • I’m voting to close this question because software recommendations are off-topic, but you could try [Software Recommendations](https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/) – Joep van Steen Aug 08 '23 at 22:48

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