Can't get rid of scroll bars, even when I disable them in System Preferences->General

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Level 1

5 points

Can't get rid of scroll bars, even when I disable them in System Preferences->General

So my "Show Scroll Bars" settings in System Preferences - General is always set to "Always" and my scroll bars always show on all my apps. Now whenever I go and change it to either "When scrolling" or "Automatically based on mouse or trackpad" the scroll bars don't disappear. Also, whenever I relaunch System Preferences and click on General, the "Show scroll bars" setting always goes back to "Always" no matter how many times I change it.

I've tried searching for a solution for a long long time and it seems like no one else out there has this problem. Posting about it here is my last hope before I'm actually forced to take my MacBook Pro to an Apple Store. Its a 2015 A1502 MacBook Pro Retina.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)

Posted on Sep 11, 2016 3:29 PM

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Answer 1

Eric Root

Level 10

685,293 points

Sep 11, 2016 7:55 PM in response to dvobgo92

Might be a corrupt .plist.

Do a backup, preferably 2 backups on 2 separate drives.

Quit the application.

Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder. Select Library. Then go to Preferences/com.apple.systempreferences.plist. Move the .plist to your desktop.

Restart the computer, open the application, and test. If it works okay, delete the plist from the desktop.

If the application is the same, return the .plist to where you got it from, overwriting the newer one.

Thanks to leonie for some information contained in this.

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Answer 2

dvobgo92 Author

Level 1

5 points

Sep 11, 2016 9:05 PM in response to Eric Root

Thanks a lot for the information, but it didn't work. Goes straight back to "Always" as if I never even chanced it in the first place...

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