Press Shift+Cmd+L. A round magnifier appears under your pointer and follows it. Press Shift+Cmd+L again to put it away.

Everything inside the lens is live, if a video is playing under it, the video plays inside it too.

If you’d rather magnify your whole screen instead of a circle under your pointer, see full-screen zoom, below.

Changing the magnification

The lens size is in Settings, in points. Make it bigger if you are showing a whole paragraph, smaller if you are pointing at one word.

While either the lens or full-screen zoom is up, Cmd+= zooms in and Cmd+- zooms out, from 1.5× up to 8×. The level is shared between the two. Switch from one to the other and it stays where you left it. It resets to the default (2×) the next time you launch Cue Canvas; it is not saved.

What you need to grant

The magnifier needs Screen Recording, and nothing else.

If you have not granted it, the magnifier tells you so instead of showing you a black circle. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording, switch Cue Canvas on, then quit Cue Canvas and open it again. macOS does not apply the permission to an app that was already running.

What your audience sees

The magnifier is part of what you are sharing, so people watching your screen see the lens too: your unmagnified screen with a magnified circle moving around it. They do not see your screen magnified.

That is usually what you want for “let me show you this detail”. If you want everyone’s whole view magnified instead, that is full-screen zoom, below.

What it does not do yet

• Adjust the level with the scroll wheel. Only the keyboard shortcuts above work today.
• Draw inside the lens. You can draw on the screen as usual while the lens is up, but ink you draw is not magnified by it.

If the magnifier does nothing

• Nothing appears at all. Check the Screen Recording permission above, then quit and reopen Cue Canvas.
• Shift+Cmd+L does nothing. Another app may already own that shortcut. Cue Canvas says so in its menu bar item. Look for “shortcut(s) taken by other apps”.
• The lens is stuck at the edge of the screen. It stays fully on screen rather than hanging over the edge, so near a corner it stops following your pointer exactly.

Full-screen zoom

Press Shift+Cmd+M. Your whole screen magnifies, panning to follow your pointer. Press Shift+Cmd+M again to put it away.

Unlike the lens, this replaces your entire view rather than showing a magnified circle inside it. Closer to what you’d get from macOS’s own built-in zoom, except it’s part of Cue Canvas, so it’s included in whatever you’re sharing.

Panning

The view eases toward your pointer rather than snapping to it instantly, so fast pointer movements don’t feel jarring at high magnification. If you’d rather it track instantly, that’s a settings-file change for now (below). There’s no in-app control for it yet.

What you need to grant

The same as the lens: Screen Recording, and nothing else. See “What you need to grant” above.

What your audience sees

The same as the lens: your unmagnified screen, this time with your whole view swapped for the magnified one moving around it. They do not see it magnified themselves.

Customizing it

Open Settings (Cmd+,) and choose Zoom.

Cmd+= and Cmd+- change the level while a zoom is on screen, and the settings window follows along as you press them.

What it does not do yet

• Adjust the level or easing with the scroll wheel. Only the keyboard shortcuts above work today.
• Draw while zoomed. You can draw on the screen as usual while full-screen zoom is up, but ink you draw is not magnified by it, and content-space anchoring for annotations made while zoomed is not built yet.

If full-screen zoom does nothing

• Nothing appears at all. Check the Screen Recording permission above, then quit and reopen Cue Canvas.
• Shift+Cmd+M does nothing. Another app may already own that shortcut. Cue Canvas says so in its menu bar item. Look for “shortcut(s) taken by other apps”.

Spotlight

Press Shift+Cmd+S. Everything on your screen dims except a circle that follows your pointer. Press Shift+Cmd+S again to turn it off.

What it’s for

A spotlight pulls your audience’s attention to exactly what you’re pointing at, the same way a real spotlight would, everything else stays visible but dimmed, so people aren’t lost when you move on to the next thing.

Turning it on

• Shift+Cmd+S toggles it from anywhere, whether or not Cue Canvas is the active app.
• No permission prompt, no setup. Like the cursor highlight, the spotlight doesn’t need Screen Recording or Accessibility access. It just follows your pointer.

Customizing it

Shape, size, and how dark the rest of the screen gets are all configurable. Open Settings (Cmd+,) and choose Spotlight.

Changes apply straight away, including while the spotlight is already up.

Multiple displays

By default, only the display your pointer is on dims, if you’re presenting across two screens, the other one stays fully visible and interactive so you (or someone helping you) can work on it without it going dark. Turn on dimAllDisplays if you’d rather every display dim except wherever the spotlight currently is.

What it does not do yet

• Live scroll-to-resize while it’s up. Adjusting size or dim while presenting, without going into settings, is coming.

Changing the zoom level

Cmd+= and Cmd+- step the magnification up and down.

They only work while a zoom is actually on screen. That is deliberate, so that Cue Canvas does not take Cmd+= away from your browser and your editor for as long as it is running. When you turn the lens or full-screen zoom on, a hint appears showing the current level and reminding you of the two keys, because that is the moment they become live. Each press shows the new level.

If you press them with no zoom up, nothing happens in Cue Canvas and the keystroke goes to whatever app you are in.