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SECOND LOOK — SCREEN MAGNIFIER FOR GAMING AND LOW VISION
Second Look: a screen magnifier for reading small game text, built for gaming and low vision
Point at the text you can't read and it enlarges, sharp, right under your cursor: quest logs, tooltips and map labels in strategy games and RPGs, for eyes that struggle with small text.
Windows + SteamOS Desktop Mode · one-time purchase · no account
Windows 10 (2004+) / 11 · SteamOS Desktop Mode · Linux: KDE Plasma 6 (Wayland)
Screenshots and trailer
Where it shines
Reading, in games that don’t have a UI scale or whose scaling blurs. Strategy: Civilization VI/VII, Crusader Kings III, Stellaris, Europa Universalis IV, Old World, Total War: Warhammer III. RPGs: Baldur’s Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Disco Elysium, Pillars of Eternity II. Simulation and management: Cities: Skylines II, Factorio, RimWorld, Football Manager, Microsoft Flight Simulator, X4, Anno 1800. Co-op without kernel anti-cheat: Deep Rock Galactic, Satisfactory, Valheim.
What it does
Read by pointing
Press a hotkey, and the area under the pointer enlarges in place and follows the pointer. Up to 5×, in 0.1 steps (the default is 2×). Two other modes when the lens is the wrong shape for the job: a fixed region you can move (off a minimap, say) and the screen centre.
Sharp, not blocky
Magnified pixels usually look like magnified pixels. Second Look upscales with AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0 (edge-adaptive), adds optional sharpening, and runs a text-sharpening pass that thickens lettering against whatever is behind it. Three quality tiers: Fast, Balanced (the default) and Sharp.
Dark-scene lift
Gamma, brightness and contrast inside the lens only, so a dim menu or a night scene reads without changing the game’s own settings. It works even at 1×, as a plain readability lift.
Colour filters
Colour filters for low-vision and colour-blind players, again inside the lens. They’re colour filters, not a correction for colour blindness.
Hotkeys that fit a game
A bare left Shift, mouse buttons 4 and 5, left and right modifiers told apart, hold or toggle, and controllers through generic HID. Named profiles per game, saved the moment anything changes.
Multi-monitor
The lens follows the pointer across displays, or pins to one. Hot-plugging a monitor is handled.
It costs nothing when idle
With zoom off there is no capture session, no frame pool, no timer, no polling. Closing the window exits the app; tray and autostart are opt-in. When it does run, our own testing showed no measurable frame-rate cost; we don’t publish a percentage because we can’t stand behind one on every PC.
The crosshair
There’s an optional crosshair with 200 designs (from Kenney’s public-domain crosshair pack), any colour and size, centred or following the pointer, saved per profile. It’s off by default, visible in recordings, and covered by the same anti-cheat caution as the magnifier. It’s a convenience for the games this app is for, not the reason to buy it.
Nothing hidden, nothing phoning home
No hooking, injection or game-memory access. No hidden process, launch flags or “compatibility mode”. No telemetry, no analytics, no network connections of any kind. No Steam DRM wrapper: it runs without Steam once installed, and an autostart launch doesn’t start Steam, so it adds no Steam playtime.
Requirements and platform notes
- Windows 10 version 2004 or later, or Windows 11. Any modern x86-64 CPU, about 100 MB of disk. On Windows, the lens is kept out of capture with the operating system’s own exclusion flag, which is why 2004 is the floor.
- SteamOS, Desktop Mode. Works, with two quirks from KDE’s compositor: capture defaults to the whole monitor, and window capture asks you to pick the window each time. Game Mode: no. There is no Steam Deck compatibility rating.
- Other Linux: KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland only. It uses KWin’s layer-shell overlay and the desktop portal’s screen capture, and it hides the lens from capture through KWin. Anything else that happens to work is incidental, not supported.
- Settings live in
%APPDATA%\SecondLook\settings.jsonon Windows and$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/second-look/settings.jsonon Linux.
Questions people ask before buying
Will using it get me banned?
In games with kernel-level anti-cheat, it can. The blocked list is in the box at the top of this page and in the app on first run. Second Look doesn’t hook or inject into games, but anti-cheat detects the screen-capture technique itself. Use it in single-player, co-op and strategy games.
Does it work on the Steam Deck / SteamOS?
In Desktop Mode, yes, fully. In Game Mode, no, and the app tells you (SteamOS has its own magnifier there). On other Linux systems it needs KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland.
Will it slow my game down?
When zoom is off, nothing runs. With the lens up, our own testing showed no measurable frame-rate cost. We don’t publish a percentage because we can’t stand behind it on every PC.
Why doesn't the magnifier show in my screenshots or recordings?
The lens sits on the pointer, over the very area it’s reading. If recordings captured it, it would magnify itself over and over. So it’s held out of capture. The crosshair does show.
The magnifier doesn't appear over my game. Why?
The game is probably in exclusive fullscreen, which no overlay can draw over. Switch the game to borderless or windowed.
Is it a screen reader?
No. It doesn’t speak, read text aloud or do OCR, and it isn’t a replacement for a full assistive-technology suite. It’s a lens for reading game interfaces by pointing.
Guides for Second Look
- A game magnifier for KDE Plasma 6 (Wayland): why the built-in zoom isn't enough for reading games, and a lens that is
On KDE Plasma 6 under Wayland, the built-in Zoom effect magnifies the whole desktop and pixelates at high zoom. Second Look is a lens that enlarges only what's under the pointer, sharpened, with hotkeys and per-game profiles, built for KWin. Steam Deck Desktop Mode included. Not GNOME, not X11.
- Game text too small? Why it happens, what the settings can do, and a lens for the rest
Why text in modern games is so small, especially at 1440p and 4K, with a worked example of how small it really is on common monitors; what in-game UI scale and Windows display scaling can and can't fix; and Second Look, a sharp lens under your cursor for the tooltips, quest logs and map labels that stay small.
- PC gaming with low vision: a practical setup guide
A setup guide for PC gaming with low vision or poor eyesight: monitor size and distance, OS scaling and contrast, cursor size, the in-game accessibility settings to look for, audio cues, and Second Look, a sharp lens under the cursor for the text that stays small. No medical claims.
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Get Second Look
Windows + SteamOS Desktop Mode · one-time purchase · no account. Price and any current discount are shown on Steam.