Magic Mouse - Disable horizontal scrolling ?

Ciao Raffo -

I'm not sure what you're saying isn't true.

The method you described has not worked for me in Lion. It did work in Snow Leopard. When I upgraded to Lion, horizontal scrolling returned. I have tried the method you describe above, repeatedly. I've even tried directly editing the plist file using xcode. That didn't work, either.

So, I will modify and repeat the question above:

- Can anyone confirm that they've been able to turn off horizontal scrolling in Lion after upgrading directly from Snow Leopard? (i.e. as opposed to after a clean install of Lion.)

Thanks, Jeff

i did the trick on SL and now it continues to work...

i can't help you more than this, because i don't have the aknowledge...

anyway, with Lion there are too many problems and the upgrade isn't so useful...

yesterday speaking with a friend we told each other: at the end, what "killer feature" do we have?

the answer: nothing

I finally found a solution that works for me in Lion. I ditched the Magic Mouse and use my old Logitech USB wireless mouse and bought an Apple Trackpad. Even with that things were not great as using natural swipping reversed the scrolling on the mouse. However yesterday I discovered Steermouse. This allows me to program the mouse independently of the Trackpad. So now I have a mouse that scrolls the way I'm used to, doesn't horizontally scroll unless I consciously rock the scroll wheel and I still have all the gestures on the trackpad. I'm left handed so having the trackpad on the left of my keyboard and the mouse in my right hand works well for me. I'm a happy bunny now. Hope this helps for others.

jeffmefun, the MagicPrefs app works in Lion. Like you, I discovered that the terminal commands listed here do not work in Lion, but the MagidPrefs app, which is free, has a version for Lion, and it does disable horizontal scrolling (thank goodness, as it was driving me batty in Pro Tools and Sibelius). (Robert Gallup's Applescript version also did not work for me in Lion, as it is, I assume, based on the terminal commands.)

Scrolling (in any direction) continues to be an issue with the magic mouse in almost any app that requires user input. The screen is constantly jumping about as windows scrol left, right, up and down.

The problem is that my index finger rests on the mouse. As I move the mouse to position the cursor, the device detects my index finger hitting the surface and concludes incorrectly that I want to scroll.

After nearly 9 months, I finally solved the problem today.

By creating a small dead zone on the mouse surface using some tissue paper and blue painters tape to hold it in place, I have "patched" my magic mouse so that it works the way I want it to. I'm not getting any random scrolling any more maiking a huge improvement in general usage.

The great thing is that the gestures still work. Just use any other part of the mouse that isn't covered by the tissue and tape (about 90% of the mouse in my case) for standard magic mouse gestures.

Now If I could just convince Apple to modify the software to ignore the upper left corner of the mouse I could remove this ugly blue tape.

Is anyone listening at Apple? Please allow either through command line prefereces or in preferences panel to disable vertical one finger scrolling with Magic Mouse.

Thank You!

Thank you LEK 2 and Robert,

That was just the job.

Robert Gallup,

THANK YOU! That does the trick without entering any code... SIMPLE!

I've found the MagicPrefs app to be the perfect solution to this problem. Let me explain:

While browsing the web, I prefer to have horizontal mouse scrolling enabled but when using Lightroom or Photoshop, horizontal scrolling becomes a nightmare and I want it disabled.

With MagicPrefs, I created a preset that disables horizontal scrolling and then bound both Lightroom and Photoshop to this preset. You can do this in MagicPrefs by clicking on the "Preset Actions" button at the bottom of the screen and selecting "Bind specific applications to this preset". I then switched back to the default preset within MagicPrefs to return to the normal scrolling behavior (horizontal scrolling enabled).

With the above setup, horizontal scrolling is enabled for all applications except Lightroom and Photoshop. Whenever you switch to one of these apps, MagicPrefs automatically disables horizontal scrolling. It will also re-enable the setting when you switch to a different app.

Give it a try, I think you'll find that this solution provides the most flexibility. Best of all, MagicPrefs is a free app!

DarrenL, your suggestion is exactly what I was looking for. After installing MagicPrefs, I disabled side scrolling in Dreamweaver but kept it for everything else.

Thank you for posting the information about MagicPrefs! I like the Magic Mouse scrolling for viewing documents, but when I'm editing documents, especially in Final Cut, Pro Tools, Sibelius, InDesign, and Excel, the inadvertant scrolling that happens so often drives me nuts! By turning off all three finger scrolling I eliminate the inadvertant scrolling. Perhaps I will even turn off all two finger scrolling, so that if I want to use the scrolling I must intentionally remove from the mouse all but one of my fingers.

I'm a graphic designer with a brand new Imac running Mountain lion. The Magic Mouse horizontal scroll has been driving me nuts.

Tried the Terminal method - didn't work for me.

Tried downloading Robert's little Applescript posted on page 1 - didn't work for me.

Finally tried MagicPrefs - solved the problem instantly. Very easy to download & install - and seems to reliably do everything you're likely to need a mouse to do. (I've disabled everything except vertical scrolling!).

Just one question to ease my anxiety: having put the required command into Terminal (which seems to have had no effect) can I just forget about it? Or is it likely to cause me a problem? (Same question applies to the Applescript - but I think I reversed the command on that just in case).

MagicPrefs! Brilliant! Thanks so much. Really, I don't know why Apple wouldn't build in at least some (working) options into OS X.

I installed MagicPrefs on my Mac with OS 10.8.5, because I wanted to disable horizontal scrolling in inDesign and was unable to using the standard Mac mouse prefs. This only disables horizontal scrolling for the finder.

Magic Prefs only worked part way for me in inDesign.

Once MagicPrefs is installed, launch it from your preferences window>Other, and see the MagicPrefs icon.

In MagicPrefs, I first tried to disable horizonal swiping for inDesign under the Magic Mouse tab (the first tab of three), but this did not work in inDesign. So then I opened the "Configure Scrolling" radio button at the bottom right side of the MagicPrefs dialog window, which launches a new window above. There you can disable the horizontal finger scrolling for 1-3 fingers. I opened inDesign and tried to horizontal scroll again. This time it did scroll slowly when gesturing my index finger right to left, but I could not get it to horizontal scroll right to left again. This is not a complete fix, but it is better than before. Before it would scroll horizontally quite quickly without my intention.

Apple needs to allow users to adjust the mouse gestures to be application specific. The horizontal scrolling has caused me much frustration and two embarassing mistakes with clients projects when using inDesign. I wish that I could get my money back on this mouse. They need to send out a software fix if they can. I hate to go any now re-buy a mouse.

MagicPrefs works fine for me in all software - including InDesign (which I use all the time and, like you, needed stabilised for professional reasons). My configuration is:

a) In Apple's Magic Mouse preferences - nothing selected except 'Scroll Direction: natural' and 'Secondary click (on right side)'.

b) In MagicPrefs preferences - nothing selected except (under 'Configure Scrolling') just all the boxes for 'vertical'.

I'm also running OS 10.8.5 - so if that configuration doesn't work same as mine, I don't know why.