How to briefly magnify Dock icons
Quick Mac Tip, 05 February 2012

Do you have your Dock set to not magnify icons? But then are they sometimes too small to see what you need to see? This quick keyboard trick solves that problem instantly.

Set the Dock preferences

Dock preferences.

Look under the Apple menu for the Dock item and the option to turn Magnification on or off, or just call up the Dock Preferences.

The screenshot shows I have Magnification turned off — I don’t really use the Dock and all the bouncy stuff just gets annoying.

The next screenshot shows a portion of my Dock — it’s small, usually hidden and has small, unobtrusive icons.

My small Dock on the right-hand side of my screen.

Hold down Shift and Control to temporarily magnify

Occasionally I do want to use the Dock for something. This week I learned a nice trick, quite by accident: hold down Shift (⇧) and Control (⌃) to temporarily magnify the icons beneath the cursor.

Magnified Dock icons.

Do make sure that even though Magnification is turned off the size slider is all the way to the right or else it won’t work. Turn it on, slide the slider, then turn it off again.

On my machine there’s a slight delay when I hover over the Dock icons, but it does work.

Oh, and I’m using Lion, Mac OS 10.7.3 — in case that makes a difference. The trick may not work in older versions of the Mac OS.

Have fun.

Let us know in the Comments how this Tip helped you.