'Picture-in-Picture' Zoom style on Accessibility>Zoom settings messes the mouse pointer – annoying BUG!

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'Picture-in-Picture' Zoom style on Accessibility>Zoom settings messes the mouse pointer – annoying BUG!

I was experimenting with the System Settings>Accesibility>Zoom settings to see how I could use these features with KeyNote, so that I could zoom in a slide while doing my presentation.

When I changed 'Zoom style' to 'Picture-in-Picture', the mouse/trackpad pointer went crazy!

The place where you see the little oblique arrow is not the place where it is really pointing to. When you click the mouse button, an object a few inches away from the arrow is selected/highlighted.

To make things worse, the difference of distance/position between arrow and selection point changes depending on the pointer position on screen.

Thus, it is very difficult to point or select what you want in screen.

I had a hard time trying to revert Zoom style back to 'Full Screen', which reverted things to normal. Only after a long time of trial and error I could make it.

So proceed with caution if you want to try to reproduce this bug. But I really think it is a serious bug, that Apple should fix as soon as possible, since it can make it almost impossible to use the computer.

I'm on a brand-new MacBook Pro running Ventura 13.5.1 (22G90).

MacBook Pro 14″

Posted on Sep 11, 2023 8:20 AM

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Answer 1

dtabach Author

Level 1

15 points

Sep 11, 2023 10:57 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

The problem happens when you are NOT using the zoom, right after you set zoom style to PIP.

It looks like the computer 'thinks' the zoom is active and try to 'correct' the pointer position to compensate zoom distortion.

Sorry, I will not make a screen capture because I'll have trouble reverting to normal.

I hope a screenshot of my zoom settings is of help. Except that 'Picture-in-Picture' is set instead of 'Full Screen'.

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Answer 2

Sep 12, 2023 2:08 AM in response to dtabach

My mac is a 16" MBP (intel). I have tried it with Zoom set to Picture-in-Picture, on several of the many options that it offers, including the highest 4096x2560, and the lowest, 720x450, and the cursor is always correctly positioned, whether zoom is active or inactive.

I was unable to cause the problem to manifest on my mac.

This could be weird rounding error or similar bug that manifests itself only in some specific screen sizes or aspect ratios. Maybe this has to do with how the new macs have the menu bar pulled up and around the camera area, therefore changing the aspect ratio from the traditional 16:10 to something taller - but I am just speculating here.

It would be interesting if others with the same model could tell us if the same problem occurs on their macs or not.

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Answer 3

Sep 11, 2023 9:07 AM in response to dtabach

I cannot reproduce this. FWIW, the way I use the Zoom feature is by doing the scroll gesture on the trackpad while holding down the control key.

The cursor remains in same position, as you can see in this screen capture:

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Answer 4

Sep 11, 2023 11:47 AM in response to dtabach

My settings are identical to yours. I temporarily changed the Zoom just to test and I could not reproduce the problem. Maybe it’s triggered in some specific circumstances. There could be a bug that results, only in some cases, in the system miscalculating the cursor position. I can understand how frustrating that is, but as I said I can’t reproduce it on my system.

Can you tell us the pixel dimensions of your screen?

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Answer 5

dtabach Author

Level 1

15 points

Sep 11, 2023 1:29 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

I use my MacBook Pro 14 with the following display settings:

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'Picture-in-Picture' Zoom style on Accessibility>Zoom settings messes the mouse pointer – annoying BUG!

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