Background:
I have recently migrated from OS X El Capitan (10.11.6) to the latest version of macOS Tahoe (26.1).
For the past 10 years, I have frequently used a Quick Look feature on El Capitan that allows me to quickly zoom into a PDF by completing the following actions:
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Press the space bar while a PDF file is selected in Finder to launch Quick Look
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Hold down the option ⌥ modifier key
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Scroll on my Magic Mouse 2 to dynamically zoom into or zoom out of the document
The beauty of this feature is that—unlike the standard Accessibility Zoom feature in macOS—the Quick Look zoom truly scales the underlying content, preventing pixelation of the text embedded in the PDF.
I have produced a screen recording on my El Capitan machine to demonstrate the above functionality:
Research:
According to the following Ask Different post, Apple removed the "scroll to zoom" Quick Look functionality with the release of macOS Mojave (10.14) in September 2018:
The top-rated answer to this question provides two workarounds:
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Preset zoom: command + 0 and command + 9
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Manual zoom: command + + and command + -
Sadly, these keyboard shortcuts have no effect on PDF files—only images.
However, user @benwiggy provided a third workaround that relies on a trackpad gesture instead of keyboard shortcuts:
If you have a Trackpad (or similar), you can use the "parting two-fingers" gesture to zoom in on a QuickLook preview.
I have verified that this method allows me to dynamically zoom into a PDF on macOS Tahoe (a well as on El Capitan, incidentally).
Question:
I perform the scroll-to-zoom maneuver dozens of times per hour. Accessing the Quick Look zoom feature on my mouse is significantly more efficient and accurate than using the trackpad. I generally do not use the built-in trackpad on my MacBook Pro, nor do I own the standalone Magic Trackpad.
Is there a third-party utility that restores the scroll-wheel-based zoom functionality in Quick Look for PDF files?
If not, is it possible to somehow remap the "pinch-to-zoom" trackpad gesture to the multi-touch surface of the Magic Mouse 2?
