MagGlass: A Hold-to-Magnify Hotkey for Windows
Squinting at tiny UI elements, fine print, or pixel-level details on a 4K monitor gets old fast. MagGlass is a tiny AutoHotkey v2 utility that puts a high-quality magnifier under your cursor the instant you hold a hotkey — and gets out of the way the moment you let go.
The Problem
Windows ships with a built-in Magnifier, but it’s a heavy, modal experience: launch it, switch modes, fight with focus, close it. For quick “what does that say?” moments while you’re working, screen-sharing on Zoom, or recording a tutorial, you want something instant and disposable.
🔍 One Hotkey Gives You a Instant Desktop Magnifier
How MagGlass Works
Hold Win+Z (or any hotkey you assign), and a magnified window appears next to your cursor showing the area underneath at ~3x zoom. Move the mouse — the view follows at 60 fps. Release the key, and it disappears. That’s it.
While the magnifier is up
- Mouse wheel up/down — adjust zoom on the fly
- Shift — freeze the current view so you can study it without the cursor moving
- Esc — dismiss a frozen view
Built for Screen Sharing & Tutorials
A toggle in Preferences makes the magnifier visible during Zoom calls, OBS recordings, and screenshots. Flip it off and it’s invisible to capture (handy when you only want it for yourself); flip it on and your audience sees exactly what you’re zooming into. A configurable red dot marks the cursor position inside the magnified view so viewers can follow along.
Configurable, Without Being Fiddly
Right-click the tray icon and you get a clean Preferences dialog (powered by the Triggers library) where you can change:
| Setting | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Hotkey | Any key combo — default Win+Z |
| Window size | How big the magnified window is on screen |
| Source size | How big the captured region is — smaller = more zoom |
| Capture visibility | Whether Zoom/OBS/screenshots include the magnifier |
| Cursor dot | Show/hide, radius, and color (with a real Windows color picker) |
All settings persist to an INI file and apply live — no restart needed.
Real-World Uses
- Code review on a high-DPI monitor — peek at a small font without cranking your editor’s zoom
- Live demos & teaching — point at a menu item and your students actually see it
- Form-filling and proofreading — verify a digit or character without leaning into the screen
- Pixel hunting — UI design, image work, or finding that one stray dot
- Accessibility — keep your normal screen layout but get magnification on demand
Under the Hood
MagGlass is built on the native Windows Magnification API for crisp, GPU-accelerated rendering — so even at 5x or 8x zoom, text stays legible. The WDA_EXCLUDEFROMCAPTURE flag is what makes the “hide from screen sharing” toggle work, and the whole thing runs in a single AutoHotkey v2 script under 400 lines.
Get MagGlass
It’s lightweight, free, and licensed CC BY 4.0. Grab the source, hold a key, and stop squinting.
