zoom(6)

🎀 zoom — from the XScreenSaver manual, section 6 🎀

💖 NAME 💖

zoom — wander around a magnified desktop, bestie. That's it. That's the whole vibe.

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

zoom [--display host:display.screen] [--foreground color] [--background
color] [--window] [--root] [--window-id number][--mono] [--install]
[--visual visual] [--delay usecs] [--duration secs] [--lenses]
[--pixwidth pixels] [--pixheight pixels] [--pixspacex pixels]
[--pixspacey pixels] [--lensoffsetx pixels] [--lensoffsety pixels]
[--fps]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so here's the tea: zoom grabs an image, magnifies it, and then just... scrolls around inside it. Fatbits-style. Literally the pixel-peeping main character energy you deserve. 🔍✨

And where does that image come from? Three possibilities, and the ~/.xscreensaver file picks for you — through the grabDesktopImages, grabVideoFrames, and chooseRandomImages options:

• the portion of the screen sitting under the window 🖥️
• the system's video input 📹
• a random file on disk 🎲

Peep xscreensaver-settings(1) for the full deets on those.

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

zoom accepts the following options, bestie — all of them, no skips:

• --window — Draw on a newly-created window. This is the default. 🪟
• --root — Draw on the root window. Going straight to the source, love that.
• --window-id number — Draw on the specified window. Just hand it the number.
• --mono — If you're on a color display, pretend we're on a monochrome display. Delusion, but make it aesthetic. 🖤🤍
• --install — Install a private colormap for the window.
• --visual visual — Specify which visual to use. Legal values are the name of a visual class, or the id number (decimal or hex) of a specific visual.
• --delay microseconds — Slow it down. Take your time, queen. 🐢
• --duration seconds — How long to run before loading a new image. Default 120 seconds.
• --lenses — Instead of doing magnification we just copy an offset region from the original image. And here's the fun part: if lensoffsetx < pixwidth (and similarly for Y) then consecutive regions will overlap, giving the effect of looking through an array of lenses. 👓🫶
• --pixwidth pixels — Width of the magnified pixels.
• --pixheight pixels — Height of the magnified pixels.
• --pixspacex pixels — Amount of black space between magnified pixels (X direction).
• --pixspacey pixels — Amount of black space between magnified pixels (Y direction).
• --lensoffsetx pixels — Distance in X direction between consecutive copied regions (only effective when -lenses used).
• --lensoffsety pixels — Distance in Y direction between consecutive copied regions (only effective when -lenses used).

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🌿 ENVIRONMENT 🌿

the environmental lore, iykyk:

• DISPLAY — to get the default host and display number.
• XENVIRONMENT — to get the name of a resource file that overrides the global resources stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property.
• XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW — The window ID to use with --root.

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

X(1), xscreensaver(1), xscreensaver-settings(1), xscreensaver-getimage(6)

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👑 COPYRIGHT 👑

Copyright © 2000 by James Macnicol. Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. No representations are made about the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

yeah that's the whole legal paragraph — every word of it stays, no cap. 💀

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🎀 AUTHOR 🎀

James Macnicol <james.macnicol@mailexcite.com>, 20-Nov-2000. Much code was shamelessly stolen from the spotlight hack and a few others. (Respect the hustle. 🫶)

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mwah 💜 that's the whole page — X Version 11, 6.15 (30-Mar-2026), zoom(6), signed sealed and slayed. go zoom around something pretty. ✨