MagX - Real-time Screen Magnifier

MagX is a lightweight, real-time screen magnifier for Linux systems. It creates a zoomed-in view of the area around your mouse cursor, perfect for presentations, accessibility, or detailed work.

Features

• 🖱️ Real-time magnification - Follows your mouse cursor instantly
• 🔍 Adjustable zoom scale - Configure the magnification level
• ⚡ Lightweight - Minimal resource usage with efficient screen capture
• 🖥️ Customizable window - Adjustable position and size
• 🎯 Smart centering - Automatically centers on cursor position
• 🚀 Fast performance - Optimized for smooth real-time updates

Requirements

MagX requires the following Linux utilities:

• bash (included with most Linux distributions)
• flock (util-linux package)
• feh - Image viewer
• xdotool - X11 automation tool
• scrot - Screen capture utility
• basenc - Base encoding/decoding utility

Installation

Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install feh xdotool scrot coreutils

Fedora/CentOS:

sudo dnf install feh xdotool scrot coreutils

Arch Linux:

sudo pacman -S feh xdotool scrot coreutils

Usage

Basic Usage

Simply run the script:

./magx

This will start MagX with default settings:

• Zoom scale: 2x
• Update interval: 1 second
• Window geometry: 800x160 at position +0+920

Configuration Options

You can customize MagX's behavior using environment variables:

# Set zoom scale (higher = more zoom)
SCALE=4 ./magx

# Set update interval in seconds (lower = smoother but more CPU)
INTERVAL=0.5 ./magx

# Set custom window geometry (widthxheight+x+y)
FEH_GEOMETRY=1024x200+100+800 ./magx

# Disable cursor centering (zoom from top-left)
NOCENTER=1 ./magx

Example Configurations

High zoom for detailed work:

SCALE=8 INTERVAL=0.3 ./magx

Large window for presentations:

FEH_GEOMETRY=1200x300+0+0 SCALE=3 ./magx

Minimal CPU usage:

INTERVAL=2 SCALE=2 ./magx

How It Works

1. Initialization: Creates a temporary image file with a default pattern
2. Window Setup: Launches feh to display the magnified view in a borderless window
3. Main Loop: Continuously captures screen regions around the cursor:
   • Gets current mouse position using xdotool
   • Calculates the capture area based on zoom scale
   • Captures the screen region using scrot
   • Updates the display window with the new image
4. Cleanup: Automatically removes temporary files when exiting

Performance Tips

• Lower intervals (e.g., 0.5) provide smoother animation but use more CPU
• Higher intervals (e.g., 2) reduce CPU usage but may feel less responsive
• The script automatically runs with low priority (renice -n 19) to minimize system impact
• Use appropriate zoom levels - higher zoom requires more processing

Troubleshooting

Common Issues

"Error getting screen resolution"

• Ensure you're running in an X11 environment
• Check that xwininfo is installed and working

"Feh closed..." message

• The feh window was closed manually
• The script will exit automatically

Performance is slow

• Try increasing the INTERVAL value
• Reduce the SCALE if zoom level is very high
• Ensure your system has adequate resources

Window positioning issues

• Verify your screen resolution with xrandr
• Adjust FEH_GEOMETRY to fit your screen layout

Dependencies Check

Run this command to verify all dependencies are installed:

for cmd in feh xdotool scrot basenc flock xwininfo; do
    if command -v "$cmd" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
        echo "✓ $cmd is installed"
    else
        echo "✗ $cmd is missing"
    fi
done

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to submit issues and enhancement requests.

Author

Created by DanielT

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Note: MagX is designed for X11 environments. Wayland support may require additional configuration or alternative tools.