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About the little scrollbar arrows...

...is there any way to get these back in Mac OS X Lion? Or do I need to downgrade to Snow Leopard just get these seemingly trivial but for me necessary things back?


Lion as a whole is a fine thing but this particular problem doesn't swing with me. Apple could just as well have left the option in the Preferences and I have no idea why they decided to remove it altogether. Not very intuitive IMO.


I work as a graphic designer and use Photoshop every day. Many files contains hundreds of layers and I really need fine control over the layers- list. Without the arrows things have increasingly become horrible, it seriously messes up my workflow. Yes, I can use the trackpad but that isn't the optimal solution for me since I use a Wacom tablet. Every time I need to bump up a few layers I automatically use the tool I have in my hand, i.e mouse or pen and it's really hard to pinpoint a specific layer many times. It's extremely annoying so I wonder if anyone know how or if there's a possibility of getting the arrows back?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Aug 10, 2011 2:14 AM

Reply
353 replies

Aug 10, 2011 3:05 AM in response to Carolyn Samit

That link simply tells you to go to System Preferences. However, though this will restore the scroll bars (albeit in the new narrow format) it doesn't restore the arrows at each end of the scrollbar. The OP is suffering from the problem which arises with any very long document or list where moving the scrollbar by a very small amount moves the page or list by a large amount. Clicking the arrows moves the page by a manageable amount.


However, in Snow Leopard one can achieve the same effect by using the keyboard's up and down arrow keys: I don't know whether this works in Lion.

Aug 10, 2011 5:18 AM in response to Gulldo

Thank you both for your input but no, the first suggestion has already been tested but it didn't do the trick. It's not the scrollbars that is the problem, it's the lack of the clickable little arrows that irks me. I need to be able to move from the one layer to the next without scrolling 20 layers up or down before I manage to highlight the layer I want.


I tried using the up and down arrows on the keyboard but unfortunately it doesn't work with Photoshop's layers menu ( or any of the sidebar menues for that matter ). Hopefully some one figures out how to resolve this dilemma.


Thanks again though

Aug 10, 2011 11:01 AM in response to Gulldo

Exactly the same thing is driving me crazy. Sorry to post here without a helpful solution, but I suppose I'm adding some sympathy and putting it into the Apple system that this is upsetting users, and for more than just aesthetic / stick-in-the-mud reasons. And because it's hard to find any discussion of this that doesn't just suggest the same as the first reply here suggests.


Another issue that wasnt broken before ( ! ) is the narrowness of the new scrollbars, which I find unhelpful when using a mouse on a busy, high-resolution screen.


There is perhaps faint hope from the fact that Google Chrome sometimes leaves "artefacts", or broken bits of scrollbar where the arrows ought to be. Sometimes I find blank white space there. So presumably some part of the system is still calling for them but they're not being rendered or tracked as buttons.


It may also be useful to keep an eye on Lion Tweaks (at ifredrik.com/applications/ ) because this has a very welcome option to remove the "leather" from iCal and Address Book. Perhaps there will be scrollbar tweaks in the future too, if somebody can find the right bit of the system to tweak.

Aug 19, 2011 3:57 AM in response to Gulldo

It can't stand that I have to go through downgrading to Snow Leopard to get the darn scrollbar arrows back. What a pain.


I use the arrows constantly to move down exactly one line at a time. And, obviously, using the arrow keys requires removing your hand from the mouse which is unnacceptable.


Also, the scrollbar is so faint it is extremely difficult to see to tell where on the page I am.

Aug 19, 2011 6:00 AM in response to Chuck Risher

For what it's worth, in case anybody needs reassuring, I've gone through the "downgrade" process, and it was almost completely painless. Fortunately I had a Time Machine backup and had made a Lion boot DVD from which to run the recovery utility.


Headaches people might like to know about:

1. There was a moment of "oh no" when the list of full backups was very short. Turned out I'd slightly renamed the icon for the computer at some stage (by removing "HD"). The more recent backups were available once I'd changed the item in the drop-down list. Because of the subtlety of the name change, this wasn't immediately obvious.


2. Mail can't be retrieved from Time Machine backups subsequent to the Lion upgrade, apparently due to some kind of change in format. However, because I'd expected this, I'd exported the messages since Lion into mbox files, which were importable.


3. A few custom icons had reverted to normal. Goodness knows what wasn't being backed up to cause this!


And now I'm so much happier. Photoshop and Final Cut no longer have weird issues where they ask for their (legitimate!) serial numbers again. I no longer get disturbing error messages from Fuse and NTFS-3G. I'm remembering just how many bits and bobs were using Rosetta. I can organise my Applications folder. And I have scrollbars back.


I honestly don't miss a single thing from Lion.

Sep 26, 2011 6:55 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1

However, in Snow Leopard one can achieve the same effect by using the keyboard's up and down arrow keys: I don't know whether this works in Lion.

crazy, isn't it. the little arrows and managable scrollbars made apple leap out of the dark ages, when the keyboard arrows were the only way to navigate. Full circle back to it.

I've been checking each week or so to see if anyone has fixed it yet too.

Sep 26, 2011 7:48 AM in response to Sam Beaver

Removing scroll bar arrows was one of the many pointless nods (so-called 'natural scrolling' being another, Launchpad a third, and so on) to Apple's fascination with iOS devices where such things have no purpose.


Rest assured, once the usability reports start flooding in they will —quietly when no one's looking — add them back.


I'm not taking bets on how many updates we'll have to wait, but let's hope its before 10.7.5, eh now, Apple... 😉

About the little scrollbar arrows...

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