Arch Linux

Ahmutkadim

Member

Registered: 2025-05-08

Posts: 1

Magnifier In Gnome Affects Screenshots and Screen Recordings

While I believe my problem is a little bit more advanced, I can still be considered as a newbie and I am posting this here hopefully to get attention to this issue which is a deal-breaker for me to transition to Linux. I have eye problems which forces me to use accessibility features like Magnification. I usually prefer the one provided by the system or in this case DE since I am looking for some qualifications to ease my workflow.
- It must be a full screen magnifier, no magnifier glass
- It must be able to follow my mouse (preferably centered).
- It should not follow focus or text carrets.
- I must be able to change the zoom level dynamically with a input bounded shortcut (not a gui). I would prefer key+scroll; however, configurable keyboard shortcuts are fine as well.
- It should have proper integration to the system, for instance, I should be able to start or control it in any situation. It must consume its shortcut inputs and should not pass them to other apps.
- It should not affect screenshots or screen recordings.

While most DEs I tried had first 5 qualifications, they all lacked the 6th one. Every DE magnifier records the zoomed area as the entire display, making the recordings/screenshots waird and unusable. While window capturing can be suggested as a solution, it is highly unpractical and brings forth unnecessary limitations. I do not know what to do about this since I posted about this in other forums like OBS and Zorin forum; however, got no response. Where I am standing at, it looks like magnifier accessibility settings are made for general users who want to zoom to parts of their screen for recording YouTube Videos. While I do not intend to accuse anbody, I cannot find another explanation for why this oversight exists.

Does anyone have any solutions for me? While I would like to do this on Gnome, I am open to other, major DEs like Cinnamon or KDE. However, I must say that I cannot use a WM since it is beyond my vision to setup, if setup is easy; however, please share. Any helpful suggestion would be appreciated.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,156

Re: Magnifier In Gnome Affects Screenshots and Screen Recordings

This oversight exists because it's not quite trivial to decouple the change in the framebuffer a magnifier does from the framebuffer's capture a screen recording is doing. You'd essentially have to disjoint the two. While I think that this might be theorethically possible, your best bet is most likely an actual feature request to whatever DE/recording tool you're using, especially in wayland, where zoom effects are likely implemented directly in the compositor which will also be the one that directly presents whatever video feed to the screen grabbing tool.

As for the accusation, while I can somewhat see the merit in what you propose, I'd never have thought of wanting to do this as a screen recording should "normally" reflect what you're seeing. And as mentioned, this is most likely not going to be trivial at all from an implementation perspective.

Last edited by V1del (2025-05-08 18:33:53)