Automatically Zoom Photos On Mouse Hover In Google Chrome

Google Chrome comes with a zooming function, which will enlarge the web page, including text, images, videos etc. However, each web page needs to be manually zoomed in or zoomed out. Hover Zoom automatically zooms the photos on your mouse hover in Chrome.

The shortcut for zooming in is Ctrl – + and for zooming out, you can press Ctrl – -. To zoom in or zoom out using the mouse, you can hold the Ctrl key and move the mouse scroll button up or down to zoom in or out.

Most of the time, we need small images to be zoomed in to take a closer look at pictures.

Hover Zoom – automatically zoom photos on hovering

Update: Now you can use Hover Zoom+ for the same purpose.

Hover Zoom is a wonderful Google Chrome extension which does the trick for us.

Hover Zoom provides larger versions of thumbnails or smaller images when you hover your mouse over the image.

This will be done automatically without delays. Just move your mouse pointer over an image and it will open a magnified version of the image in a hover window without clicking or opening anything else.

When you move your mouse pointer away from the image, the magnified image will automatically disappear.

Sometimes it can be annoying that the extension opens the images instantly even if we hover the mouse accidentally.

Fortunately, we can configure the delay after which an image is magnified.

To configure the delay, go to Chrome Settings –> Extensions. Under Hover Zoom, select Options. Under Delay, adjust the delay by seconds according to your needs.

You can also enable or disable Hover Zoom extension for specific sites.

The biggest issue with Hover Zoom is that it doesn’t work for all sites but will work for the majority of the sites including Facebook, Twitter, Google, Reddit, Amazon, Tumbler and of course ITechtics.

Overall, if you open websites with a lot of small images, Hover Zoom extension is a must have for you. If you are uncomfortable with Hover Zoom, you may also try out similar Google Chrome extensions like Photo Zoom for Facebook, Photo Zoom for Twitter, Image Hover Zoom, and Hover Free.

Imagus – Enlarge thumbnails, show images/videos from links with a mouse hover

Imagus is another wonderful app for zooming images on Chrome. It’s popular and works well to enlarge thumbnails, and show images/videos from links with a mouse hover. The biggest advantage of Imagus is that you can define which sites Imagus should be enabled or disabled.

Install Imagus from Chrome Web Store

Which Google Chrome extension works best for you? For me, the primary extension to zoom images still remains Hover Zoom. If Hover Zoom doesn’t work for you, you can use Hover Zoom+ or Imagus as better alternatives.