Canvas Navigation
How you pan and zoom the two zoomable canvases — the Viewer and the Node Graph. Both behave the same so the gestures are muscle-memory across panels. Mouse and trackpad are both first-class.
Gestures
| Gesture | Action |
|---|---|
| Scroll wheel (mouse) | Zoom, centered on the cursor |
| Pinch (trackpad) | Zoom, centered on the cursor |
| Two-finger swipe (trackpad) | Pan |
Cmd + wheel | Zoom (explicit — works with any input) |
| Middle-mouse drag | Pan |
Zooming is always cursor-centered: the point under the pointer stays put as the canvas scales, so you zoom into what you're looking at rather than the center of the panel.
Mouse vs. trackpad
The editor picks pan vs. zoom automatically — there's no mode toggle:
- A plain mouse scroll wheel always zooms, at a fixed step per notch.
- A trackpad two-finger swipe pans, and a pinch zooms smoothly.
- Holding
Cmdwhile scrolling forces a zoom. This works with any input device, so it's the reliable fallback whenever a gesture doesn't do what you expect.
Touch-surface mice
Some "mice" use a touch surface instead of a notched wheel — the Apple Magic Mouse and free-spin scroll wheels (e.g. some Logitech models). On these, a plain one-finger swipe pans instead of zooms. To zoom, hold Cmd while scrolling.
Zoom limits
Each canvas clamps zoom to its own range:
- Viewer: 5%–400%.
- Node Graph: 25%–300%.
The Viewer also has a Fit mode (scales the comp to the panel); zooming from Fit resolves to a concrete percentage and zooms from there.
Timeline (Keys & Graph)
The timeline's Keys (dope sheet) and Graph (graph editor) canvases follow the same mouse-vs-trackpad split, but the non-zoom gesture scrolls the timeline rather than panning a 2D canvas:
| Gesture | Keys (dope sheet) | Graph editor |
|---|---|---|
| Two-finger swipe | Slide through time (horizontal) and tracks (vertical) | Slide through time (horizontal) and pan the value axis (vertical) |
| Pinch | Zoom the time axis | Zoom the time axis |
| Scroll wheel (mouse) | Zoom the time axis | Zoom the time axis |
Alt + wheel | Native scroll | Zoom the value axis |
Pinch-zoom on the time axis accumulates smoothly: a continuous pinch eases through the zoom levels rather than jumping, while a mouse wheel still moves exactly one zoom step per notch.
Related
- Timeline Panel — the timeline has its own horizontal (time) zoom; see its zoom shortcuts.
- Keyboard shortcuts — the canvas-navigation gestures are also listed there.