Not sure if this is expected behaviour or a bug. The new “Smooth Zoom” is, well, not at all smooth on my system. It goes in steps no matter what speed you set it out (speed just affects how big the steps are). That is at least when tied to a scroll gesture on the trackpad. Any advice?
Is there a way to make it smooth, like for example macOS’s native Accessibility → Zoom feature is when linked to scroll gestures? (That is screen-wide zoom, not content zoom though.)
(I am trying to use this as a workaround to the macOS bug that pinch+zoom is unreliable on MacBook Airs, since mid-Ventura and counting with no fix coming from Apple.)
Thanks!
That smooth zooming is not really made for Trackpads because they already have the pinch zoom - how is that unreliable for you?
You could probably create a smooth zoom scroll modifier - that should also work on trackpad: Scroll Modifiers | BetterTouchTool Documentation
However this will never be more reliable than the integrated pinch zoom
Ah I see. I’ve left some info about the bug below–if you have any suggestions please let me know! Any chance of maybe adding native pinch-zoom as an action in BTT? It’s definitely possible because LinearMouse has done it—I just don’t like their version because orientation and speed cannot be set (and are both different from the Apple convention), plus I would rather not have yet another app installed. You never know—maybe some people prefer a Cmd+scroll motion to pinch even on trackpads!
The Apple Bug:
On MacBook Airs (at least newer ones—I have an M2) since mid Ventura the pinch-zoom gesture is randomly missed maybe 20% of the time, sometimes more sometimes less, maybe a little worse in some apps than others. Aside from my own I’ve tested this on many MBAs in Apple Stores. Happens on both built in and external Apple trackpads. One interesting note is that it’s related to screen refresh rate because it doesn’t happen on MacBook Pros at their native higher refresh, but does happen on them if you set them to 60 Hz which is the MBA refresh.
If you have a newer MBA, just open an image in Preview and try 30 pinch-zooms, and count how many are missed (e.g. I just did this and got 5 missed). Might not seem like a big deal but for someone who does a lot of design work and relies on that gesture throughout the day, it gets very painful. Also it’s not me or how I’m doing it—this was never a thing before mid Ventura.
