In this issue, I’m going to give you the option to cancel your eye doctor appointment or throw your glasses in the garbage can. What we’re going to do is use a Mac option called Hover Text.

What this does is almost like holding a magnifying glass over the text on your screen. So if you have trouble reading small text or photos that have tiny text in them, you don’t have to squint your eyes, buy new glasses or purchase a cheap magnifying glass. This also gives you a few cool options like changing the color of the text and displaying it on the top or on the bottom of the screen.

So let’s begin by going into System Preferences on your Mac and choosing Accessibility, and clicking on Zoom. Now click on Enable Hover Text. Ready? Let’s play around and click on Options. A menu pops up with Text Size and Text Font, but let’s click Text-Entry Location and choose Bottom Left.

Okay, almost done, but let’s keep the Activation Modifier using the Command key, which when pressed will start up the option to Zoom in. Wait a second — let’s click on Color and have some fun changing the text color to red and background color to yellow. Now click on Okay, and let’s try it out.

Go ahead and open up a web page like ABC.com, and when it opens up, move your mouse over some text. Nothing happens. What gives?

Well, first you have to press down on the Command key and move your mouse around to see the zoomed-in text. You can also scroll down on the zoomed-in text to see more. Tapping the ESC key removes the zoomed-in text. I tried this with a couple of documents and on a couple of web pages. It worked pretty well after I got accustomed to pressing the Command key and moving the mouse around. It’s something I probably won’t use much because you can also use the Zoom feature located at the top of the screen on most apps under VIEW, ZOOM.

Now that Big Sur is out replacing Catalina, not all Macs can upgrade to it. So if you have a Macbook Air, it has to be 2013 or later. The Macbook Pro is also 2013 or later, and the iMac is 2014 or later. If you’re happy with what’s on your Mac now, don’t upgrade or go out and buy a newer Mac.

Big Sur has some cool features — like on iMessages, which is able to send out multiple texts and has more emojis to select from. You can create one that looks like yourself.

My friend Kathy who lives down the street asked me how she can capture a photo from a video clip. Well, it’s very simple. Start your video clip and press on pause where you want to take a snapshot of the image. Now press Command, Shift, 4 and take your mouse and expand it around the image. When you release your mouse, you should hear a snapshot sound, and the image should appear on your desktop. Click on it, and the picture will display in the Preview App, where you can save it, edit it or print it out.

So, knock yourself out, Kathy, and snap away!

Send your computer-related questions to MauiMist@aol.com.