I didn’t! I just discovered it today while working on fixing a bug. And boy is it awesome! Just hold down the Meta (aka “Super” or “Windows) and Ctrl keys, then scroll. Boom! Note that this only works in a Plasma Wayland session.
We don’t expose this shortcut in the UI right now, so it’s quite hidden and explains why I and probably many others didn’t know about it. We’ll work on improving this.
Adventures in Linux and KDE 
Starting in what version? (Does not work on my system with 5.27.1)
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Hmm weird, I’m on 5.27.2 and it works. I wonder if it only works on Wayland…
Edit: confirmed, it’s Wayland-only. Updated the post.
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FWIW, searching on Zoom in system settings, I find a Zoom under Desktop Effects, which is configured to KWin actions Meta+= and Meta+-, which does work for me.
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Works for me on 5.27.2 Wayland. Very cool feature. Thanks!
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wow, you can zoom in so far that you almost get out on the other side
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Waow, that is cool enough. Glad to know
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It works on X11 too.
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I always use Super and +/-, and Super and 0 to go back to normal zoom level. But this trick with the mouse is also very neat!
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This was one of the first features to demonstrate what is possible on Wayland thanks to input redirection. It was implemented before we had drm support. Back then one could also activate the cube with a mouse shortcut.
That also explains why there’s no GUI to configure.
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I was using Meta+=/Meta+- before, and it worked well, but now when I test it – as well as Ctrl+Meta+Scroll, it only zooms in to the top left corner of my multi-screen setup – not where the mouse is (which is what I remember it should do).
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Doesn’t work very well with a touchpad…
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The zoom level is hard to control with 2-finger scroll on a touchpad: it suddenly zooms all the way in, then changes direction if I keep moving my fingers in the same direction. Using KDE Plasma 5.27.2.
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Yes, it could stand to be improved with a touchpad for sure.
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It works across monitors, too, zooming monitors onto other monitors.
Neat.
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This tiny blog post just completely changed my workflow! I have low-vision so I use desktop zoom constantly. Until now, I had to use a gaming mouse with dedicated buttons mapped to Meta+0/Meta+= to avoid taking my hand off it. It works, but it’s not smooth and if I’m traveling without that mouse, I’m back to the keyboard. This is so much smoother! Thanks! Now I just need to get Wayland on my work laptop.
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That’s great to hear!
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Hi, another excited low-vision zoom user here.
Should you need another option for seamless full-desktop zoom:
XFCE does out-of-the-box zoom too. It is currently limited to X11, but it is said Wayland support is in the making.
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Yay, works in Wayland perfectly! Since Plasma 5.27 update I switched to Wayland and have no need to switch back to X11.
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And it works with pad as well, so mouse is not needed.
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I also found that accidentally and love that feature looking the same for x11 as sometimes i had to use x11
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I too have very low vision.
This was a major blocker for me in regards to wayland.
I use xbindkeys to bind alt+scroll to zoom via “qdbus org.kde.kglobalaccel /component/kwin invokeShortcut view_zoom_in”. I also have a gming mouse with meta+= and meta+- bound, but scrolling is natural to me at this point.
Thank you to whoever put this in!
Does it block scrolling?
I mean, right now with xbindkeys the scroll event still gets passed to the window under my mouse when using my zoom shortcut, which is a bit annoying, but not annoying enough to outweigh the convenience of scroll zooming.
On wayland, is the scroll action consumed by this shortcut?
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I use this a lot while showing code during calls with screen sharing and love it!
What I find a bit annoying tho, is that with a multi-monitor setup, the content that gets kicked out of the screen I’m zooming, overflows onto the adjacent screen.
Which quickly becomes an obstacle when I want to zoom to specific bits of code I’m presenting, while keeping an eye on the Teams/Slack/you-name-it conferencing app I’m keeping on the screen I’m not presenting, and that I would like to stay fully visible instead of covered by zoomed contents from the screen I’ve zoomed in.
I guess the TL;DR is, please make it per-screen, if possible (or even better, have a different feature that zooms in only a certain area around the cursor)
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