Safari / iOS / iPad: any way to grab scrollbar indicator and scroll it directly?

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Safari / iOS / iPad: any way to grab scrollbar indicator and scroll it directly?

Is there a way (gesture, whatever) to "grab" the gray "slider" that shows, while scrolling, the approximate location in the document, on the right scrollbar, of a long web page, and scroll up or down by dragging it up or down instead of swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swiping the page? Swiping the page is great for scrolling one line at a time. It's not so great for scrolling hundreds of lines. Nothing I try "grabs" the slider instead of the page itself.

I wish for this most often in Safari, but it seems like there are other apps in iOS (Chrome, e.g.,) where I wish I knew how to do this.

iPad Pro 10.5-inch, Wi-Fi

Posted on Dec 6, 2018 6:13 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

MichelPM

Level 10

81,559 points

Dec 6, 2018 6:38 PM in response to Dick Watson

There is no way to do this in the default iOS Safari Web browser.

There are some third party Web browsers that allow you to activate a scrolling bar.

The one I use that has a scrolling bar you can activate is

Perfect® Browser by AppSimply

‎Perfect® Browser on the App Store

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Answer 2

Dick Watson Author

Level 1

56 points

Dec 6, 2018 7:50 PM in response to MichelPM

Well, I guess it's good to know I wasn't just too dumb to figure it out. This seems like a hole in the vaunted greatness of the Apple UI. A different browser doesn't really help much; my most common use case for this is when reading articles I've opened from iOS email--so they open, by definition, in Safari.

So speedy swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe... I guess it must be.

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Answer 3

Dick Watson Author

Level 1

56 points

Dec 7, 2018 8:50 AM in response to MichelPM

I'm no stranger to third-party browsers. I own and regularly use iPad, Windows PCs, Pixel2 phone, Chromebook, MacBook. Chrome is the best common denominator. (It can't do a scollbar drag on iOS, either.) I know I can copy/paste links, but life is short. If the choice is between copy/paste links all the time or just accepting Safari and this one limitation on the iPad, I guess I accept. I've had the iPad for 14 months and have lived with this limitation; I just finally wondered if I was missing something fundamental after having to scroll almost to the bottom of an exceptionally long article.

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Answer 4

Dick Watson Author

Level 1

56 points

Dec 7, 2018 9:55 AM in response to MichelPM

I'm no stranger to third-party browsers. I own and regularly use iPad, Windows PCs, Pixel2 phone, Chromebook, MacBook. Chrome is the best common denominator. (It can't do a scollbar drag on iOS, either.) I know I can copy/paste links, but life is short. If the choice is between copy/paste links all the time or just accepting Safari and this one limitation on the iPad, I guess I accept. I've had the iPad for 14 months and have lived with this limitation; I just finally wondered if I was missing something fundamental after having to scroll almost to the bottom of an exceptionally long article.

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Answer 5

ShagCA

Level 5

6,365 points

Dec 7, 2018 10:05 AM in response to Dick Watson

Have a look at this discussion:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2303020

I don't know if that is still a valid solution today. Give it a try anyway. The trick works on my Firefox browser on desktop PC. I don't have my iPad with me right now so I can't test it.

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Answer 6

MichelPM

Level 10

81,559 points

Dec 7, 2018 12:06 AM in response to Dick Watson

You can always copy the news link and insert it into the address bar of another Web browser.

I stopped using the default iOS Safari Web browser many years, ago, because, like its Mac OS version it’s tied to the particular operating system.

I do not upgrade/update my computer and mobile devices regularly.

So, I use third party Web browsers because they ARE NOT tied to any OS and most third party Web browsers get updates no matter what the OS is.

Third party Web browsers support a wide range of OSes.

I copy links and other Web addresses into another third party Web browser all the time for many years.

It is no big deal to do that.

There are many other third party Web browsers that are better, feature-wise, than Apple Safari.

Apple Safari, on any Apple OS, is NOT the “end all, BE al” of Web browsers for iOS.

Some, like Perfect Browser even have support for content download managers for downloading content directly into your iPad from the Internet.

The choice is up to you, but there are other third party Web browsers that will do what you want.

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Safari / iOS / iPad: any way to grab scrollbar indicator and scroll it directly?

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