Ctrl+Scroll Zoom

Zoom your notes in and out with Ctrl + mouse wheel, just like a web browser or VS Code.

• Ctrl + wheel up → zoom in
• Ctrl + wheel down → zoom out
• Trackpad pinch-to-zoom also works (the browser reports a pinch as a Ctrl+wheel event).

Unlike image-only zoom plugins, this scales the whole note — text, images and diagrams together. By default only the note content zooms while the ribbon, sidebars and tab bar stay at 100%; a Whole app mode (Electron page zoom, UI included) is available in settings.

Features

• Smooth Ctrl+wheel zoom anywhere in the app (editor, sidebars, panes, pop-out windows).
• Two zoom targets (Settings → Zoom target): Note content only (default since v1.4.0) — the ribbon, sidebars and tab bar stay at 100% and only the open note scales (text and images together) — or Whole app (UI included, like a browser). Content zoom is frame-throttled and anchored to the mouse cursor, so the spot you point at stays put while you zoom.
• Figures keep growing (v1.5.0, content mode) — images normally stop at the pane edge (max-width: 100%), so a full-width figure would not get any bigger while the text grows. Now figures keep scaling with the zoom past the pane edge; pan them with the scrollbar under the figure (can be turned off in settings).
• Multiplicative zoom steps — each notch scales by the same ratio (e.g. ×1.1), so zooming feels consistent at 50% and at 300%.
• Smooth trackpad pinch — pinch deltas zoom proportionally instead of jumping a full step per event.
• Plays nice with Canvas and Excalidraw — Ctrl+scroll over these keeps their own spatial zoom (can be turned off in settings). PDFs zoom themselves in Note content mode; in Whole app mode the app zoom applies above PDFs too.
• PDF-aware indicator — while a PDF is the active view, the status bar shows the PDF's own zoom (e.g. 🔍 PDF 80%) and clicking it resets the PDF to 100% too.
• Choice of modifier key: Ctrl, Cmd/Win, or Alt/Option.
• Zoom level persists across restarts, and the indicator stays in sync with Obsidian's built-in Ctrl + / Ctrl - zoom.
• Status-bar indicator showing the current zoom %; click it to reset to 100%.
• Command-palette commands: Zoom in, Zoom out, Reset zoom to 100% (assignable to hotkeys).
• Slider settings for zoom step and min/max limits, plus an option to hide the status-bar indicator.

Installation

From Community Plugins (once approved)

Settings → Community plugins → Browse → search "Ctrl+Scroll Zoom" → Install → Enable.

Manual

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release.
2. Copy them into <your vault>/.obsidian/plugins/ctrl-scroll-zoom/.
3. Reload Obsidian, then enable Ctrl+Scroll Zoom under Settings → Community plugins.

Via BRAT

Add hata-suriiken/obsidian-ctrl-scroll-zoom in the BRAT plugin to track beta releases.

Usage

Hold Ctrl and scroll the mouse wheel: up to enlarge, down to shrink. You can also use the status-bar 🔍 nnn% indicator (click to reset) or the commands listed above.

How it works

The plugin listens for wheel events carrying the Ctrl modifier. In the default Note content only mode it scales the open note with CSS zoom; in Whole app mode it adjusts the Electron renderer's zoom factor via webFrame.setZoomFactor. It is desktop-only (mobile has the companion plugin below).

Upgrading from ≤ 1.3.x: the default zoom target changed from Whole app to Note content only, and existing installs are migrated once. If you prefer the old behavior, set Settings → Zoom target back to Whole app.

Notes

• This affects only the Obsidian window, not other applications.
• In Note content only mode the editor uses CSS zoom, so the in-editor cursor may sit slightly off at non-100% zoom (same caveat as the mobile companion plugin); the reading view is unaffected. PDFs keep their own built-in Ctrl+scroll zoom in this mode.
• It coexists with Obsidian's built-in Ctrl + / Ctrl - zoom.
• If you use Mousewheel Image Zoom with Ctrl as its modifier, the two may overlap while hovering an image; change one of the modifiers to avoid this.

License

MIT © 2026 hata-suriiken