Image Hover Zoom

WHAT IT DOES

Image Hover Zoom displays a large, zoomed-in preview of any image when you hover your mouse over it. The preview shows a high-quality enlargement of the image area around your cursor, making it easy to see fine details without clicking or opening a new tab. You can adjust the zoom level (1x to 8x), preview size (80-400px), and the delay before the zoom appears (0-1000ms). The tool includes a magnifying glass effect that shows a circular zoomed area following your cursor, and works with both standard img elements and background images. All settings are saved locally and remembered across sessions.

WHERE IT RUNS

The extension runs entirely within your browser's local environment using the BotGentz framework. All image rendering, canvas processing, and zoom calculations occur on your machine without any network requests. No image data, zoom settings, or user activity is ever transmitted, uploaded, or stored externally. The tool works on any website and respects the browser's security boundaries, operating within the isolated extension sandbox. Image processing uses the HTML5 Canvas API for high-quality rendering.

HOW TO USE

Click the extension toolbar icon to open the Image Hover Zoom panel. The tool is active by default—simply hover over any image on the page to see the zoomed preview. Use the "Zoom Level" slider (1x to 8x) to control how much the image is magnified. Use the "Preview Size" slider (80-400px) to adjust the size of the zoom window. Use the "Zoom Delay" slider (0-1000ms) to control how long to wait before showing the zoom. Toggle "Enable magnifier" to show or hide the circular magnifying glass that follows your cursor. Toggle "Zoom on all images" to enable zooming on all images, or disable it to only zoom on smaller images (thumbnails). Click "Refresh Images" to re-scan the page for newly added images. The zoom preview appears near your cursor and follows your mouse movement for smooth exploration.

THE ZOOM RENDERING ENGINE — WHY IT WORKS

Most image zoom tools use CSS transforms to scale images, which can result in pixelated or blurry enlargements. This tool uses the HTML5 Canvas API with imageSmoothingEnabled and imageSmoothingQuality set to "high" for superior image quality. When you hover over an image, the engine calculates the cursor position relative to the image, determines the corresponding pixel coordinates in the original image, then extracts a region around that point scaled to the preview size. The zoom factor determines how much of the original image is captured—a higher zoom factor means a smaller area is enlarged more. The magnifier effect uses the same canvas rendering but displays a circular preview with a smaller capture area. The delay timer prevents accidental triggers and reduces CPU usage during rapid mouse movement. This canvas-based approach delivers sharp, smooth zoomed previews regardless of the original image size.

THE PANEL

The Image Hover Zoom panel is fully draggable by its title bar and remembers its position on screen per website. It snaps to the edges of your browser window for clean alignment. Collapse the panel to a compact icon strip using the minimize button, restoring it with a single click. Resize the panel by dragging any edge or corner; the zoom controls and options adjust proportionally. Press the Escape key to close the panel instantly. The panel maintains independent state for each browser tab, allowing you to use image zoom in multiple tabs simultaneously.

PLEASE NOTE

This extension requires the free BotGentz extension framework to be installed and enabled. The tool works with most image formats supported by the browser (JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF, SVG). Some SVG images and dynamically loaded images may not zoom correctly due to rendering restrictions. Cross-origin images may have limited canvas access; the tool will display a message when an image cannot be zoomed. All image processing is performed locally and is never transmitted, logged, or shared. The extension requests no network permissions and functions entirely offline. The source code is fully auditable and available for review.