Use Zoom In and Out While Recording in OBS Studio

Have you ever wanted to zoom the screen recording area to where your cursor currently is? OBS can do it for you with the help of third-party scripts. You don't need a dedicated video editor in Linux just for zooming into an area.

Before starting this guide, let's make sure you have OBS Studio installed on your system.

Step 1: Download Zoom to Mouse Lua script

Now that you have installed and set OBS Studio, let's see how to set the Zoom to mouse feature. First, you need to download the “Zoom to Mouse” Lua script.

Use the link below to go to the GitHub repository of the project.

OBS Zoom to Mouse

In this repository, click on the obs-zoom-to-mouse.lua Lua script file link.

On the code page, click on the download button available on the top-right.

Click on the download button on the top-right of the page to download the script. — Click on the Download Button

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You can also use the releases section to get the file.

Step 2: Install the lua script in OBS

Open OBS Studio and select Tools → Scripts.

Click on Tools from the menu bar and select Scripts option. — Click on Tools → Scripts

In the scripts window, click on the “+” button in the bottom-left, as shown below.

On tthe bottom, click on the plus button to load a script from file. — Click “+” to add Script

This will open a file chooser, where you can see the location of the scripts. For me, it is /usr/share/obs/obs-plugins/frontend-tools/scripts.

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This location may vary according to the OBS Studio installation method (deb, snap, flatpak etc_. Replace the location according to your method of installation.

You need to copy the downloaded Lua script file to this location.

For this, open a terminal. Now, assuming you have downloaded the Lua script to the ~/Downloads directory, use the command:

sudo cp ~/Downloads/obs-zoom-to-mouse.lua /usr/share/obs/obs-plugins/frontend-tools/scripts

Now, you can see this script appear in the Scripts dialog we have opened earlier. Click on it and select Open.

Open the Lua script file, that has been copied to the scripts directory in OBS Scripts. — Select and Open the Lua Script File in OBS Studio

This will open the script settings. Here, you need to select a Zoom Source. This should be the same as the screen capture source.

Zoom to mouse settings. Set the Zoom source as the capturing device. — Zoom to mouse settings

You can go through the rest of the settings for further tweaks.

Step 3: Set a hotkey for Zoom

Now that you have installed the Zoom to Mouse script, you should set a hotkey for this action. Otherwise, it will be difficult to access this feature.

On the main menu of OBS Studio, click on File → Settings.

Click on File in the OBS Studio main menu. Here, select Settings. — Click on File → Settings

In the settings window, go to Hotkeys. Here, scroll down a bit to get the Toggle zoom to mouse and Toggle follow mouse during zoom shortcuts.

Toggle zoom to mouse: Toggle between zoom and normal views.
Toggle follow mouse during zoom: Decides whether the zoom follows the cursor, or lock in the current position. If locked, the other part of the video won't be visible if the cursor is out of the zoomed location.

In the field corresponding to these options, press your required shortcuts.

Set a hotkey to zoom to mouse settings in OBS Studio hotkey settings. — Set a Hotkey

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You should not be adding hotkeys that have other preset values in the system. For example, setting a key like CTRL A will cause issue since this is the shortcut to select all items in the supported windows. Use some obscure shortcut which is not common.

Once set, click on Apply and close the settings windows. Now restart the OBS Studio and enjoy zooming in and out.