Today’s magnetic device technology is based on complex magnetic alloys or multilayers that are patterned on the nanoscale and operate at GHz frequencies. To better understand the behavior of such devices one needs an experimental approach that is capable to detect magnetization with nanometer and picosecond sensitivity. In addition, since a device contains different magnetic elements, a technique is needed that provides element specific information about not only ferromagnetic but antiferromagnetic materials as well. Synchrotron based x-ray microscopy provides exactly these capabilities, because a synchrotron produces tunable and fully polarized x-rays with energies between several tens of eV up to tens of keV. The interaction of tunable x-rays with matter is element specific, allowing us to separately address different elements in a device. The polarization dependence or dichroism of the x-ray interaction provides a path to measure a ferromagnetic moment and measure its orientation or determine the orientation of the spin axis in an antiferromagnet. The wavelength of x-rays is of the order of nanometer, which enables microscopy with nanometer spatial resolution. And finally, a synchrotron is a pulsed x-ray source, with a pulse length of tens of picosecond, which enables us to study magnetization dynamics with a time resolution given by the x-ray pulse length in a pump-probe fashion. The goal of this talk is to present an introduction into the field and explain the capabilities of synchrotron based x-ray microscopy to a diverse audience, which is becoming a tool that is available at every synchrotron. The general introduction will be followed by a set of examples that will depend on the audience and range from properties of magnetic materials in rocks and meteorites over magnetic inclusions in magnetic oxides and interfacial magnetism in magnetic multilayer to the dynamics of nanostructured due to field, current pulses as well as microwave excitations.