How to zoom and pan on Freeform on a Mac, using a normal mouse?

They're assuming everyone is using a trackpad of some sort. In the development of this app, the fact that no one at Apple thought about the huge number of people wanting to use this app with a mouse is absolutely confounding. It's like writing a word processing app, but disabling the space bar. For me personally, it makes this app completely unusable. There have been so many examples of this sort of thing from Apple in recent years. So disappointing.

Hey everyone, just found out you can do the mouse zoom by holding command and option at the same time and scrolling on our mouse

Actually it does but... (there is always a but) only with my apple mouse, with my Logitech mouse it does not work.

UX best practices were totally ignored on this.

Who designed this? Who signed off on the design?

Deal with them now.

no solutions but a post in solidarity... mind boggling this miss. Or am I missing something? It is infuriating trying to zoom in on a really big canvas with keyboard... Not fixed in new Mac OS either.... Well I say fixed, maybe I am the problem? Just seems like such a massive oversight, cant help doubting myself...

Here you go.

To go side to side its "Shift" + Scroll

Nice!! Thanks a lot for the hint!

Panning horizontally and vertically indeed works this way. 😎👌

However, the described keyboard+mouse shortcuts I would want to use in combination with this for zooming (option+command+scrollwheel) unfortunately don't seem to work for me.

it's moments like these that stops my joy of having switched to MacOS instantly.

Yes, it's a "new"ish App, but I can't imagine how something like this is missed and still not added to Freeform...

btw, can this thread be moved somewhere the devs might see it? It's not really Mac Mini related...

Devs don't see these things at all I think...

Here they might see it...

Feedback - macOS - Apple

Ok, I found a workaround through a 3rd party app, which makes Freeform usable to me again. I have no idea why this wasn't implemented from the start since it seems like a very standard method of control for infinite canvas style apps.

That being said, I stumbled across Smart Scroll from marcmoino.com. Yes, it is a paid app, but I'm gladly giving the developer 14 bucks to solve this insane oversight. There is a feature in the app called Grab Scroll. If you make the settings just for Freeform, and do the "hot key + drag primary button" and map the hot key to the Space Bar, you have the solution. It's not 100% smooth, but Freeform instantly becomes 10x more navigateable this way.

I hope this helps. I've been through what feels like thousands of google searches and hundreds of forums to never find an answer to this. Good luck everyone! Freeform is a great start and this tweak makes it my go to app for infinite brainstorming and organizing now.

Same! How can you even pan in freeform using mouse? I am using trackpad and mouse right now. Cannot believe the product is from apple.

@thetuesdayspecial this is not true. You can not zoom using the middle mouse and holding command and option. Does not work in freeform.

I would really like to be able to pan and zoom easier within FreeForm. I love this app for brainstorming and even taking notes. I would use it a lot more if it would allow me to navigate more easily. Also, I use a Wacom tablet and it would be great if I could draw in the app with it.

The "accessibility" panel allows for zooming "the entire screen" but not changing the zoom within an application window that's in focus. So, no, the accessibility panel unfortunately doesn't solve the lack of ability to zoom intuitively with a mouse in Freeform.

Pinch to zoom works with a trackpad... and command +/- works to step the zoom in increments of 25%... but there doesn't seem to be a modifier key that allows for a zoom gesture on the Magic Mouse. Interestingly... you can pan on the Magic Mouse's touch enabled surface... but you can't zoom.

So to the Apple Freeform App development group... please add this capability!

I agree there should be a modifier to more easily allow panning and zooming, but I did discover if you turn on Smart Zoom for the Magic Mouse you can double tap to zoom in and out. That's OK, but panning on the top of Magic Mouse is tedious to be sure.