Pinch-to-zoom (not just increase font-size)

Feature requests
1

Use case or problem

Hi,
I would love to see implemented into obsidian the possibility of “pinch-to-zoom” similar to how it is implemented in browsers (like Chrome, Firefox, etc…), where, when you zoom, you are actually zooming the content shown on screen without changing font-size and application interface.

Current workaround

Currently, there’s no workaround available (at least to my knowledge). The best you can do is increasing the font-size, but this is a slower solution, changes the obsidian interface and the actual result is not satisfactory.

I have seen an other post ( Way to Zoom in to a note (like the zoom implementation in Chrome) without zooming the side bar/navigation/menu bars ) but the responses were more focused on changing font-size than the real question asked.

Thanks

1 Like
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What would you use it for?

3

I would love this for magnifying embedded images. Current options, even if you open the image in another tab, only allow the image to be magnified to full screen. I would have to use “open in default app” if I want a more detailed view.

(I also agree that changing the font size is slow and generally just make the interface looks clunky.)

2 Likes
4

I think that those can be useful usecases:

  • this is just a better and faster ways to zoom in on content
  • I use Obsidian to take note for my undergraduate course in physics, so there are a lot of formulas and graphs that are not so much affected when you increase only the font size
  • adding this feature can allow the user to still have a lot of content on the screen, but with the option to quickly focus on a small portion to get more details
  • I have a custom css to limit the length of a line to a portion of the screen (similar to the default option on the settings, I wanted it to be a little bigger) and when I increase the font size it doesn’t scale well

Probably there are more reasons, but this is what it came into my mind at the moment.

In general I think it just a better and more flexible way to consume the content.

3 Likes
5

Another good reason is for mobile device (I used ipad) where the 30px limit is often not enough, notably for Chinese characters, which appear incredibly tiny in obsidian compared to latin letters… I heard it’s the same for many non western languages…

6

Would like to register my interest for this feature.

Pinch-to-zoom is very helpful when working with dense information like diagrams, graphs, or heavily subscripted equations. Changing the font size feels clunky and does not always result in the intended output