A game magnifier for KDE Plasma 6 (Wayland): why the built-in zoom isn't enough for reading games, and a lens that is
Plasma’s built-in zoom works under Wayland, and it still isn’t a game magnifier: it scales everything and it doesn’t sharpen. Here’s what Second Look does on KWin, and in the first screen because it matters: it supports KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland only. Not GNOME, not X11.
Game Mode on the Steam Deck
If you’re on a Steam Deck in Game Mode, read this first: Second Look doesn’t run there (SteamOS’s Game Mode compositor doesn’t expose the interfaces it needs, and the app tells you so). Game Mode has its own magnifier built in. The rest of this page is about Desktop Mode and desktop KDE.
What the built-in zoom does, and where it stops
Plasma’s compositor ships a Zoom desktop effect that magnifies the whole screen and tracks the pointer. Two limits for games:
- It zooms everything. The whole desktop scales, so you lose the overview of the game to read one tooltip, and you pan around with the mouse to find your place again.
- It’s pixelated at high zoom. The r/kde thread “why when i zoom in KDE the images are pixels?” describes it: the effect scales the framebuffer with no sharpening, so at 3× the text is big blocks.
What Second Look does on KDE
Second Look is a lens, not a full-screen zoom: press the key and the area under the pointer enlarges in place (up to 5×), sharpened with FSR 1.0 and a text-sharpening pass, with a dark-scene lift and colour filters inside the lens, and it goes away when you let go. The rest of the screen stays at 1×, so you keep the game’s overview. Hotkeys work while the game has focus (a bare Shift, mouse buttons, hold or toggle, controllers), and there’s a profile per game.
How it works on KDE, and why only KDE: it draws its lens as a layer-shell overlay on KWin, captures the screen through the desktop portal’s ScreenCast interface, and asks KWin to hide the lens from screen capture so it doesn’t magnify itself. GNOME, X11 sessions and other compositors don’t provide that combination, so they aren’t supported; anything that happens to work elsewhere is incidental.
Two things you’ll notice on KDE that the Windows build doesn’t do: capture defaults to the whole monitor (KWin doesn’t expose the window-under-pointer information the Windows build uses), and choosing window capture asks you to pick the window each time through the portal dialog.
Steam Deck in Desktop Mode
Desktop Mode on the Deck is KDE Plasma on Wayland, so everything above applies: Second Look installs from Steam and runs as on any Plasma 6 Wayland desktop. Switch back to Game Mode and the app exits the picture.
As of 16 Sep 2026, Second Look was the only screen magnifier on Steam with a Linux build. One-time purchase, no account, and it exits when you close it.
Related guides
- 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.