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How do I fix the scroll direction in Mavericks?

I just upgraded from 10.6.8 to Mavericks. Everything is bass-ackwards. When I scroll I expect to move the scroll bar, not the whole page. Whose bright idea was this. How do I fix it so my computer works like it has for 10 years?

Mac mini, OS X Mavericks (10.9.1), 300 GB, 250 GB, 160 GB firewire external HDs

Posted on Jan 12, 2014 4:43 PM

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18 replies

Jan 12, 2014 9:30 PM in response to Tracy Reynolds

Apple has done the right things. Perhaps some history will help to explain this.


The old scroll behavior was based on the scroll behavior of a mouse wheel. You turn the top of the mouse wheel in the direction you want the document to go.


Seven years ago, Apple introduced the iPhone. This is important because it trained people to scroll pages the natural way, like in the real world. You directly push the object in the direction you want it (the page) to go, not the user interface device (scroll wheel).


Apple realized there was now an inconsistency between the real world (direct manipulation) and the way that scrolling had worked for years since scroll wheel mice were invented for Windows and then used on Macs. Apple decided that the inconsistency should be resolved in favor of the real world, as the iPhone had done. You push the thing you want to move. Direct manipulation.


This is why the new default behavior of scrolling is called natural. Because it really is natural.


I realize it is "backwards" to what you are used to, but I hope the above shows that in reality, the "traditional" way of scrolling was actually backwards and in contradiction to how direct manipulation should work. The old way was wrong. Apple has fixed it, and we have gesture UIs introduced by the iPhone to thank for this worthwhile correction.


It will be a pain in the rear for a while, but stick to the new setting and you'll soon be as used to it as you were to the old, backwards way.

Jan 14, 2014 10:46 AM in response to Tracy Reynolds

Yes, old habits are hard to break. It took me a while to adjust. But, to help explain what is going on and why it is such a great thing, scroll bars are disappearing in general because there is less and less need for them. New desktop Macs that come with a pointing device come with a Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad. New laptop Macs have a trackpad built in. That means all of these Macs can easily scroll windows with a simple two-finger swipe. This is more efficient because you don't have to haul the cursor all the way to the edge of the screen just to scroll, and then haul it all the way back to where it needs to interact with the page, over and over again. Instead, you can leave the pointer where it is and just swipe to scroll.


Even before the trackpad came along, my scroll bar use was going down because I made heavy use of my Page Up, Page Down, Home, and End keys (even on my Mac laptop where these are Fn+arrow keys), and one day I discovered that in web browsers and PDF readers, the spacebar scrolls down and Shift-spacebar scrolls up.


In the end I kept finding that having to make repeated round trips to the scroll bars with the mouse was the least efficient way to get around.

How do I fix the scroll direction in Mavericks?

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