By the ReScreen team · · 5 min read
You turned automatic zoom on, watched the result, and something was off. The camera lurched between two buttons a centimetre apart, or pulled back before your sentence ended, or pushed in so far the viewer lost track of which screen they were on. The zoom was not the mistake; the defaults simply were not tuned for your recording. This guide is the Smart Zoom settings explained one control at a time: what each does, which complaint it fixes, and what to set it to for the kind of video you make.
How does Smart Zoom decide where to zoom?
ReScreen records your clicks, drags and scrolls as events while it records. When the take opens in the editor, those events become zoom blocks on the Zoom track. If you want the mechanics first, read how an auto zoom screen recorder builds zooms from clicks; this article is about tuning the result.
Two consequences matter. Zooms come from events, not pixels, so nothing is baked into the capture and every setting below can be changed after recording. And macOS only reports clicks to apps with Input Monitoring permission, so grant it before the take.
The controls live in two places: Settings, under the Smart Zoom tab, sets defaults for new recordings. The same panel in the editor's inspector changes the open project only.
The Smart Zoom section
Automatic zoom
The master switch. Turn it off where motion would distract, such as a long code read-through, and add manual zooms by hand.
Zoom amount (1.1× to 4×, default 1.5×)
How far each zoom pushes in, and the setting people over-use. A high value makes one button enormous and removes the context that tells the viewer where that button lives. Go higher only when the target is genuinely tiny or the video will be watched on a phone.
Animation: seven easings
This controls how the zoom accelerates in and out.
- Smooth (default): eases at both ends. Right for almost everything.
- Gentle: a softer, slower start and finish. Suits courses and calm narration.
- Snappy: moves fast, then settles. Suits product demos and short social clips.
- Spring: a slight overshoot before settling. Playful; use sparingly.
- Ease In-Out: a classic sine curve, close to Smooth.
- Linear: constant speed. Mechanical, occasionally useful for technical content.
- Instant: a hard cut with no travel. Useful for quick, punchy edits.
Combine nearby clicks and Combine within (0.5 to 5 s, default 2 s)
This is the fix for twitchy zooms. With it on, a click that follows the previous one within the "Combine within" window joins the existing zoom, and the frame pans to the new spot instead of zooming out and back in. Drags are followed and scrolls extend the zoom while it is active.
If you fill forms or click through menus quickly, raise the window to 3 or 4 seconds. If each click should feel like a separate beat, lower it.
Camera-aware framing
When your webcam bubble is visible, this steers the zoom's focus away from it so the thing you clicked does not end up behind your face. It applies to zooms whose focus is Auto. Leave it on if you record with a camera.
Return to full screen
On, each zoom pulls back after its hold time. Off, an automatic zoom stays in until the recording ends or the next zoom takes over, which suits a walkthrough that lives in one corner of an app.
The Timing section: five sliders, one rhythm
| Setting | Range | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delay before zoom | 0 to 3 s | 0.1 s | Gap between the click and the zoom starting |
| Zoom in | 0.05 to 3 s | 0.25 s | How long the push-in takes |
| Stay zoomed | 0 to 15 s | 1.25 s | How long the zoom holds after an interaction |
| Delay before return | 0 to 10 s | 0.3 s | Extra pause before pulling back |
| Zoom out | 0.05 to 3 s | 0.3 s | How long the pull-back takes |
"Stay zoomed" is the one to match to how you talk. If you explain each click for several seconds, a 1.25-second hold pulls away mid-sentence. Raise it until the zoom outlasts your explanation.
After changing any of these in the editor, press "Regenerate Automatic Zooms". It rebuilds the automatic blocks with the new timings and keeps every manual zoom you added.
Recommended Smart Zoom settings by scenario
- Software tutorials: Zoom amount 1.5 to 1.8×, Smooth, Stay zoomed 2 to 3 s, Combine within 2 to 3 s. Readable and unhurried. Pair it with the pointer advice in the cursor smoothing and click effects guide.
- Product demos: 1.4 to 1.6×, Snappy, Zoom in 0.2 s, Stay zoomed around 1.5 s. Energetic without hiding the product's layout, which matters when you are recording a product demo video that converts.
- Social clips: 1.8 to 2.5×, Snappy or Spring, short holds. Phones are small, and the vertical export presets already fill the frame.
- Courses: 1.3 to 1.5×, Gentle, Zoom in 0.4 s, Stay zoomed 3 s or more, Combine within 3 to 4 s. Students watch for an hour; constant motion is tiring.
Save each combination as a preset under Settings, General, so you choose a look once per video type rather than once per video.
When should you edit a single zoom instead?
For the exceptions, select a zoom block in the timeline and the "Selected zoom" controls appear:
- Start and End retime the block.
- Magnification overrides the zoom amount for that block alone.
- Entry duration, Exit duration and Animation change its motion.
- Focus chooses what the frame follows: Auto uses the recorded clicks and steers around the camera, Cursor follows the pointer, Click uses the click positions exactly as recorded, and Manual lets you click in the preview to choose the focus point.
- Delete Zoom removes a zoom you do not want.
You can also add a manual zoom anywhere, to emphasise something you never clicked, such as a chart. This level of per-block control is one of the points we compare honestly in ReScreen vs Screen Studio.
Next step: tune it on your own recording
Record two minutes of your real workflow, open the Smart Zoom tab, and change one slider at a time with the preview running. Preview and export share one compositor, so what you see is what ships. The full feature overview is on the Smart Zoom page.
ReScreen runs on macOS 14 Sonoma or later, and every plan includes every setting described here. Download ReScreen for macOS or compare the monthly, yearly and lifetime options on the pricing page.
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