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Show HN: UnnaturalScrollWheels – Better scroll wheel settings for macOS

176 points by aptgetrekt 6y ago

dpcx 6y ago
As someone who prefers Natural Scroll (and who understands that there are people who don't), why would someone want Natural Scroll on one interaction method and not on another? That feels like confusion waiting to happen, IMHO.
- jordanmoconnor 6y ago
  Natural scroll direction while using a mouse isn't traditionally how one would use a mouse - but the issue is if you set the scroll direction to change for your mouse (on a mac) it also sets it for your trackpad.
- fonix 6y ago
  honestly, if this popped up more than 2 weeks ago i'd wonder the same thing. i love the way the mac trackpad works, including the scroll direction. but i plugged a mouse in and was doing some gaming stuff. it is unintuitive as hell to have the scroll wheel go the 'opposite' way for zooming on an rts. i changed the setting for the mouse, and later when on the trackpad again, wondered why the hell it was backwards. no idea why 1 setting, in 2 locations, uses the same config value.
- dashwav 6y ago
  I have been looking for a solution to this problem for a very long time and my reasoning is that on a trackpad, natural makes a lot of sense intuitively, since you are "pushing" the document (page/app/whatever) the direction you want it to move. Whereas when I am using a mouse I feel like I the document is below the mouse more or less and when I move the scrollwheel it is physically moving the document as if it was tied to the scrollwheel. Not sure if that makes any sense, as this is just some internal feelings on it, but I have beeen manually toggling the natural scroll when i plug and unplug my mouse ever since I started using MacOs
  - aptgetrekt 6y ago
    Yeah I think the exact same way! The top of the physical wheel spins the opposite direction of the bottom of the wheel which would be "touching" the page/content. Originally I was going to just make a background script to automatically toggle the option when it detects certain USB devices (like my mouse) but I couldn't find a way to apply settings changed via the "defaults write" command without logging out and then back in. In my research I came across discrete-scroll and scroll reverser on GitHub. Discrete-scroll worked in Catalina but had no GUI, and Scroll Reverser didn't work reliably on Catalina. So I combined the ideas from both in as little Swift code as possible so that anyone using my app wouldn't need to worry about allowing the app to "control your computer".
    - dashwav 6y ago
      I have to say I really appreciate this! I was going down very similar lines just last week (I had installed Hammerspoon and was experimenting with some applescript hacks, but to no avail). Just intercepting the actual scroll and inverting it is a really elegant solution (that doesn't require a relog) which is great. This solves one of the two biggest gripes I had about MacOs - with the other being my inablility to "pin" my dock to one of my monitors, overriding the swap functionality. Thanks!
    - dasb 6y ago
      I've always pictured scrolling as moving a camera or visor over a static sheet.
  - dustincoates 6y ago
    I'm the same as you, and it also took me a while to figure out why it was. The best explanation I could come up with is that it felt like I was moving the scroll bar with a scroll wheel, while that's clearly not the case when I'm using a trackpad or touch.
- quenix 6y ago
  I like Natural Scroll on the trackpad because my mind somewhat subconsciously maps the page onto the trackpad. Then, scrolling on the trackpad is like dragging the page up or down with my fingers. Mentally, the same mapping does not happen with a scroll wheel. So it’s a weird psychological block when I scroll down with a scroll wheel and the page goes up.
- stnmtn 6y ago
  I have always used a mouse when scrolling down makes the page go down, and on the trackpad scrolling down makes the page go up. It makes sense to me somehow, probably because I'm used to the input method of a phone's scrolling and so that transfers to a trackpad naturally.
- snissn 6y ago
  I get confused about which is natural and which is normal scroll but I have subconscious muscle memory, so if this tools helps people that for whatever reason were trained to have this subconscious muscle memory / why not? It's all pretty arbitrary anyway. Aren't your eyes bolted on upside down and your brain has a layer that inverts it?
  - jaywalk 6y ago
    Our eyes aren't "upside down" it's just that light passing through a convex lens (the front of our eyes) gets flipped.
- pantaloony 6y ago
  I map “natural” on the touchpad to moving the page. I map “natural” on the scroll wheel to moving the scrollbar. Both are “natural”, but opposite.
- Tyr42 6y ago
  I only use trackpads on osx, but I use scroll wheels on linux and windows too. So I'm fine with whatever on the trackpad, but I need my mouse to stay consistent with the rest of the world.
- jabroni_salad 6y ago
  When I use a mouse, I always expect pulling the scrollwheel towards me to move the page downwards. That is just how it has been my entire life. However, when I use a touch surface such as a trackpad or touchscreen I like to push the page up. disclaimer: not a magic mouse user.
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  "Interaction method" here is a name for entirely different stacks starting from the hardware that just happen to be abstracted the same way by the OS. Why would people be confused by some piece of hardware not behaving like some completely different piece of hardware?
- rkudeshi 6y ago
  For me, it’s because my muscle memory for a mouse (which I use primarily on my work Windows computer, occasionally on my Mac laptop) is different than a trackpad (which I only use with my Mac laptop). Unfortunately, macOS doesn’t let you set different options for each.
muli_d 6y ago
Thank you. I've been using Scroll Reverser[1], but it hasn't been updated to fully support Catalina (it works, but the installation process was not updated to request the permissions in Catalina). I'll check out UnnaturalScrollWheels to see if it's a good replacement. [1] https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/ https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/
- aptgetrekt 6y ago
  You're welcome! Scroll Reverser no longer working well in Catalina is one of the main reasons that led me to create my own solution to the problem.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- servercobra 6y ago
  As far as I could tell Scroll Reverse reversed all scrolling, so when I walked away from my desk, I'd have to kill it to use my trackpad normally.
  - buffin 6y ago
    You can control this in the preferences: pasteboard.co/JjBKDWf.png
  - aeyes 6y ago
    There is a separate option to reverse scrolling of the trackpad, works flawless here.
saagarjha 6y ago
I used to use something like this for my mouse, but started using a trackpad full-time so I didn’t need it anymore. Recently I’ve started using a mouse again, but without something like this installed, and now I feel like I like natural scrolling for mice too :/ Must be something you get used to.
- aptgetrekt 6y ago
  I could probably get used to it if I used only macOS, but I use Linux and Windows most of the time and switching scroll directions when I use macOS gets frustrating. That and physical scroll wheels scrolling "unnaturally" is what seems natural to me, @dashwav explains why I feel that way quite well in their reply to another comment.
behnamoh 6y ago
I like natural scroll so much I even use AutoHotkey on Windows to emulate the same behavior. Unfortunately, it reverses everything, so, say, volume scroll is reversed too. I'm sure there are workarounds about that. Unlike some comments here, when I move from TrackPad to mouse, I still think of the scroll wheel as the document, so natural scroll makes more sense for me, personally. The only thing I would get rid of in TrackPad is the "bounce effect" when you reach the Home/End of the document. Also, many documents are perfectly fit in the app window (e.g. Preview) but still the horizontal scroll moves them around, which is annoying (try opening a new PDF in Preview and use left/right arrow keys to move to next page; it scrolls the document horizontally slightly!)
- aptgetrekt 6y ago
  You can actually change the scroll direction of a mouse in Windows with a registry edit: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-other_settings/reverse-the-scroll-of-mouse/334669c3-8a45-4600-830a-8df628d7415e https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10...
  - behnamoh 6y ago
    Thank you, yes I tried that and it works.
- cyann 6y ago
  Same here, I've got this one-liner in my system config: Inverse or reverse mouse wheel (natural scrolling), reboot or unplug the mouse. Must be run in an admin powershell console. Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\HID\\\Device` Parameters FlipFlopWheel -EA 0 | ForEach-Object { Set-ItemProperty $_.PSPath FlipFlopWheel 1 }
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    I used to use this, but I found that it sometimes got disabled when I unplugged and replugged my mouse (and always if I later got a new mouse). I eventually gave up.
Kimitri 6y ago
Logitech Options has an option to set the scroll direction. As I switch between a trackpad and a Logitech mouse the scroll direction is always set to whichever feels ”expected” to the pointing device I’m using. It was a joyous day to discover the setting in Logitech Options. :)
henryaj 6y ago
Thank you thank you thank you. Was literally looking for something like this earlier today!
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
I miss when apps like this were built as preference panes. An app that does nothing but change an OS setting—and whose user interface exists purely to adjust those settings—does not belong in my applications folder, and certainly not in my menu bar. Such apps ought to live in System Preferences, alongside other, well, system preferences. And what do you know, Apple built a way for third party developers to do just that! Preference panes used to be the norm, but that seems to have changed over the last decade. It pains me to admit that an app is probably the right approach nowadays, because when everyone else is doing things one way, users will expect you to do that too. One more way that OS X's UI metaphors have regressed...
- mikestew 6y ago
  Are OS X's metaphors slipping, or are they just being folded into how developers write their apps, or consumers use them? I ask because of the iOS Settings app: it used to be that was the place one changed the settings of an app, not in the app itself. IOW, kinda like the macOS System Preferences panes...sorta. Point is, it can appear that the OS settings pane/app/whatever is for stuff Apple controls, and the rest has to go in an app or menubar. I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying that Apple has let the messaging get really confused.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    > I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying that Apple has let the messaging get really confused. Right—part of Apple's job is to create an environment where the "correct path" is clear and developers want to follow it. Either Apple used to do a better job, or else developers did. And, consider: • Apple encourages developers to distribute via the Mac App Store as much as possible. • Preference Panes cannot be sold in the Mac App Store. • In Catalina, all Safari extensions must be installed from the App Store as individual apps. • New Notification Center widgets are always installed as applications. Old Dashboard widgets never were. I would say that taken together, the clear implication from Apple is that apps are the way to go. And it all comes back to the Mac App Store, which Apple wants to push that at all costs. Evidently, they either actively don't want to sell non-apps in the store, or they don't care enough to build that functionality. There are probably times when Apple's patterns are just wrong and the community coalesces on something better—I can't think of any, but it has probably happened, or will some day. But I do not think this is one of those times, because if you step back, using an app does not make objective sense. (P.S. It's interesting to note that Apple's own iOS apps tend to have far fewer in-app preferences, in favor of sticking stuff in the Settings app.)
exabrial 6y ago
Why this was this change ever touted as "innovative"?
- mikestew 6y ago
  Do you have a URL where this is touted as "innovative", since you used quote marks? Because I believe it was introduced as a way to be consistent with iOS and how users scroll using that OS. No one was filing patents on this one, however.
  - nicky0 6y ago
    Quite right. It wasn't really touted as anything. It just showed up in OS X 10.7 in 2010.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      Nit: Lion was released in 2011, it was just presented in 2010.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- abraxas 6y ago
  Because the Moore’s law has petered out and software bloat reached unimaginable levels and is incomprehensible to its authors thus we are getting “innovations” of this sort. Hey, did you see the new animated emoji pack the new version is shipping with? Really should check it out!
rsweeney21 6y ago
This is awesome! Thank you so much for making this! Every day I have to relearn how to scroll when I switch back and forth from my Mac and Windows machines. It frustrated me that the scrolling direction of two completely different input mechanisms were tied together. Thanks again!
marblessubtext 6y ago
Disabling acceleration is a big feature here, again something that makes sense on a trackpad but does not on a scroll wheel. It's infuriating switching between Linux/Windows/macOS _with the same mouse_ and only macOS has acceleration. Logitech Options doesn't even give acceleration Also along these lines of bizarre defaults, I don't remember how but I had to change key press settings to allow for repeated presses. Apparently the default behavior is to give you accent character options. Then from there I had to change the interval/initial timings to be closer to Linux/Windows as well. Of course now I'm paying the price with the dreaded repeat inputs on this keyboard
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  > Disabling acceleration is a big feature here, again something that makes sense on a trackpad but does not on a scroll wheel. Ah, but it makes sense on Apple scroll wheels! I think that's why they never added a built-in option to disable it. Nowadays the Magic Mouse doesn't even have a physical scroll wheel, but even on the Mighty Mouse, the scroll wheel was a little ball that could roll in any direction and didn't have notches, so acceleration made sense. Acceleration + notches are what do not go together.
  - aptgetrekt 6y ago
    I think the magic mouse is treated like a trackpad under the hood so all the gestures work. If someone with a magic mouse tried to uncheck the natural scrolling box under mouse they'd be confused as to why it didn't change so that could be why the two settings are "linked".
    - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      ...right, that also makes sense with how some other tools behave. So this applies more to the Mighty Mouse, which is what the wheel acceleration curve feels optimized for IMO.
    - grishka 6y ago
      Also there's this app called MagicPrefs that allows you to bind things to gestures, including rebinding the system ones. I use it to bind three-finger click as middle click and at this point I can't fathom not having it. It supports all kinds of Apple trackpads and the magic mouse. This implies that all touch gestures, regardless of the shape of the device, share most of the underlying code.
cletus 6y ago
So I like Mac hardware and to this day for reasons I cannot fathom, I still consider the Macbook trackpad to be the only usable incarnation of this technology I've ever seen. This goes beyond hardware too as it seems like integration into the OS is a key factor. Touch pads still feel kludgy on Windows and Linux (to me at least). Even on Mac hardware. But there are certain UX fails by Apple I cannot comprehend and this is one of them. I remember when this changed. It was years ago now. Apple decided the previous way of doing things was unnatural and just reversed it. If you want it the "unnatural" way you could use a setting. But the inability to split how the trackpad worked and how a scroll wheel worked is nothing short of pigheadedness ("no, it's the users who are wrong" to paraphrase Principal Skkinner). Sadly this isn't an isolated example. The earlier iPads had an orientation lock physical switch on them. I love this feature. And then Apple decided this was "inconsistent" with the iPhone (which had no such switch) and removed it. I mean the switch was obviously still there but now it did something completely useless. I think it muted the iPad instead? If you wanted this you could just hold down the volume down button. Then they briefly added back the option of getting the old behaviour but that only lasted briefly before that option and ultimately the switch were entirely gone. I used the orientation lock all the time and I'm still dark about it. Another: a Bluetooth keyboard or trackpad connected to the laptop by USB will automatically pair. Great feature. Compare this to the Bose headphones I have, which are a total nightmare as soon as you pair to more than one device to the point where I've installed homebrew packages and scripts to disconnect Bluetooth when I close the lid of my Macbook (who decided it was a good default to pair to a Macbook with the lid closed vs one with its lid open? I mean does anyone even use pairing to a closed Macbook?). The problem? There's a popup I need to dismiss saying "This trakcpad is now wirelessly connected to your computer". Great. I don't care. I don't ever want to see this message again. Is there an option for that? No! I find full screen mode for apps great. I often have it set up so my IDE is one screen and I can swipe left and right between my main desktop and my IDE. The problem? If your mouse gets near the top of the screen a menu bar appears, often obscuring the top of your IDE so you have to walk this fine line between getting high enough on the screen but not too high. I have a 32" 4K monitor. I'm fine with the menu being visible all the time to avoid this. Really. Why don't I have that option? Years ago Chrome actually worked like that. Then it mysteriously disappeared. When I worked at Google I asked about this and was told something like it was considered a "bug" and it violated Apple's UI guidelines or something similar. So now we have the dumb version. Yet another: if you have multiple monitors, one of them is the "main" display. It has the dock. If you hit the bottom of the screen on a different monitor the dock will move. You can't turn this "feature" off. The best you can do is put the dock somewhere else. I don't want the dock somewhere else. What's really troubling about the last two is they really ignore the basic tenets of HCI in that the corners and edges of the screen are the easiest places to hit. Microsoft famously ignored this years ago when on Windows 9x the Start button was offset by a couple of pixels from the corner for no good reasons. No doubt some designer's opinionated sense of aesthetics. So, rant aside, thanks for making this utility. I know there have been other solutions to this as well. Part of me still hopes Apple sees reason and reverses their dumb decisions here.
flaxton 6y ago
I would never use this - it makes sense for the trackpad and mouse to work in the “natural” direction, just like on an iPhone and iPad screen. When I use Windows on a real PC then it confuses me, but that is rare I do that. So this makes no sense to me, but hey, whatever floats your boat ;-)
jedberg 6y ago
Since HN users tend to be more traditional in how they expect their computers to act, I wonder, how many people turn off "natural" scrolling the second they get a new Mac? I never understood why it was there. It makes a ton of sense for content to scroll in the direction your finger moves when your finger is touching the content, but I fail to understand why you'd expect it to move that way when using a touchpad or a mouse. Was this done specifically for users who were coming to Mac from iPad?
- dhosek 6y ago
  Arguably, the other direction is less intuitive. When Apple introduced this, it took me a couple days to adapt, but now if I ever end up on a Windows machine with the scroll setting in "unnatural" mode, it makes no sense.
- pottertheotter 6y ago
  I agree. I find "natural" to be very unnatural, and it seems to be everywhere now. It drives me nuts when I help my wife with something on her laptop. When/how did this become the norm, because it seems like it was not at one time? I suppose most computer users don't consider settings at all and just go with whatever the default is and eventually get comfortable using that, not knowing it's not "normal". But who made the change so that this became the new normal setting?
  - netsharc 6y ago
    It was Apple who decided down was up one day. Nowadays on Windows with Synaptics trackpads, we have the same problem (well for me it is, as you say, you prefer it). It made sense because it relates to PgUp/PgDn or to consider that you're pulling the scrollbar indicator down. (oh, what's that, this UI element is hidden nowadays..?).
w0mbat 6y ago
I've used wheel mice on the Mac from the time the Microsoft USB wheel mouse came out, back when there was a Mac driver that controlled classic Mac apps by looking for scroll bars and sending events, licensed from an Italian developer. I myself added native wheel support to some major Carbon apps, and convinced other engineers to do it, as I was at Microsoft MacBU at the time. But anyway, when Apple decided that scroll wheels should work the other way around, I gave it a try. I soon acclimatized to it and never had to change the default again. I would recommend all Mac users try out the "natural" setting and see if you get used to it. Now explain why I HAVE to invert the y-axis in Halo on XBOX (any version of either). I tried but I can not adjust to the default.
- haecceity 6y ago
  I invert the y motion of my mouse too.
rootbear 6y ago
On my Dell XPS running Ubuntu, I have the touch pad set to "natural" scrolling but I also use a mouse and have that set to traditional scrolling. I find I like this combination a lot, so being able to set up my Mac the same way would be great. As for why I like them to be different, I think it's all about the tactile experience. I find using the trackpad to be very much like using a touch screen on a phone. In both cases, it's as if I'm manipulating the screen content directly with my finger. With the scroll wheel, it's a different tactile experience and the traditional behavior seems more "correct". Someone could do a nice human factors study on this.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  > As for why I like them to be different, I think it's all about the tactile experience. I find using the trackpad to be very much like using a touch screen on a phone. My personal experience is that after years of keeping the "natural" scroll setting enabled, my scroll wheel has gained some of that tactile feeling in my brain. It's like the wheel is the content, and I'm pushing it up and down with my finger. However, it definitely took longer for this to happen than with a TrackPad.
  - rootbear 6y ago
    Interesting observation. I've never taken the time to try to retrain myself to use a mouse in natural mode. This is in part due to the fact that I am a Linux system administrator and I am often working on systems that aren't mine. I think it would be very confusing if the mouse on my Linux workstation worked one way and everyone else's worked differently.
frickenhamster 6y ago
My solution was SteerMouse. It allows me to individually set every scroll option and mouse speed and acceleration
- baxuz 6y ago
  I also use Steermouse so that I can actually bind the back/forward keys to CMD+[ / CMD+], while also disabling regular pointer acceleration alongside the scroll issues. I also don't think it runs as an accessibility service, but as a low-level driver. Downside is that it's not free.
mruszczyk 6y ago
Once I gave up on Scroll Revserser, I found Mos[1] as another option for this need. It just got a new v3 release and allows for toggleable smooth scrolling, as well as very granular scrolling options on top of the scroll reversing. I'm a big fan. [1]https://mos.caldis.me/ https://mos.caldis.me/
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
agentdrtran 6y ago
Disabling scroll acceleration is a godsend.
slowwriter 6y ago
Thank you! I needed this so much! Honestly can’t believe this is not default behavior in macOS.
etoulas 6y ago
I’m a happy user of ControlPlane since many years for exactly this purpose. > With ControlPlane you can intelligently reconfigure your Mac or perform any number of actions based on input from a wide variety of evidence sources […] https://github.com/dustinrue/ControlPlane https://github.com/dustinrue/ControlPlane
totetsu 6y ago
The difference in scrolling is quite jarring when first using MacOS after being familiar with other environments. I imagine many people googling how to fix it, only to find Apple called their way "natural scrolling" just to add insult to injury. [Don't you people have better things to downvote?]
dmalvarado 6y ago
God bless you. This has filled me with rage since lockdown. Can’t wait to try it tomorrow.
drinkcocacola 6y ago
"Moving the camera" vs "Dragging the document" Many years ago, when I was teachin my mother how to use the computer, I noticed something that I recalled the day Apple introduced the "Natural" Scroll thing. She was working on a Word document, so I told her that she didn't need to click the scroll bar, but to scroll directly using the mouse wheel. To my surprise, she moved the wheel in the "wrong" direction. And for some seconds she was wondering why the whole thing was "inverted". In that moment I thought that probably we were all taught "incorrectly", and maybe, just maybe, "intuitively" people will think about scrolling on the opposite way, but we ended up learning that it was not correct, adapting our minds to the already established behavior of the mouse wheel. The truth is. I embraced with happiness the "Natural" scrolling from Apple with the touchpad and the magic mouse on macOS, but also had a hard time getting used to this behavior with a regular mouse. I've been struggling since then, and I still use the "classic" scrolling with my Windows-based PC.
bitfroster 6y ago
Thank you for the app! I've created PR for brew cask, as I wanted to be able to add it to my dotfiles. https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/pull/86697 https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/pull/86697

176 points by aptgetrekt 6y ago

dpcx 6y ago

As someone who prefers Natural Scroll (and who understands that there are people who don't), why would someone want Natural Scroll on one interaction method and not on another? That feels like confusion waiting to happen, IMHO.

jordanmoconnor 6y ago
Natural scroll direction while using a mouse isn't traditionally how one would use a mouse - but the issue is if you set the scroll direction to change for your mouse (on a mac) it also sets it for your trackpad.
fonix 6y ago
honestly, if this popped up more than 2 weeks ago i'd wonder the same thing. i love the way the mac trackpad works, including the scroll direction. but i plugged a mouse in and was doing some gaming stuff. it is unintuitive as hell to have the scroll wheel go the 'opposite' way for zooming on an rts. i changed the setting for the mouse, and later when on the trackpad again, wondered why the hell it was backwards. no idea why 1 setting, in 2 locations, uses the same config value.
dashwav 6y ago
I have been looking for a solution to this problem for a very long time and my reasoning is that on a trackpad, natural makes a lot of sense intuitively, since you are "pushing" the document (page/app/whatever) the direction you want it to move. Whereas when I am using a mouse I feel like I the document is below the mouse more or less and when I move the scrollwheel it is physically moving the document as if it was tied to the scrollwheel. Not sure if that makes any sense, as this is just some internal feelings on it, but I have beeen manually toggling the natural scroll when i plug and unplug my mouse ever since I started using MacOs
- aptgetrekt 6y ago
  Yeah I think the exact same way! The top of the physical wheel spins the opposite direction of the bottom of the wheel which would be "touching" the page/content. Originally I was going to just make a background script to automatically toggle the option when it detects certain USB devices (like my mouse) but I couldn't find a way to apply settings changed via the "defaults write" command without logging out and then back in. In my research I came across discrete-scroll and scroll reverser on GitHub. Discrete-scroll worked in Catalina but had no GUI, and Scroll Reverser didn't work reliably on Catalina. So I combined the ideas from both in as little Swift code as possible so that anyone using my app wouldn't need to worry about allowing the app to "control your computer".
  - dashwav 6y ago
    I have to say I really appreciate this! I was going down very similar lines just last week (I had installed Hammerspoon and was experimenting with some applescript hacks, but to no avail). Just intercepting the actual scroll and inverting it is a really elegant solution (that doesn't require a relog) which is great. This solves one of the two biggest gripes I had about MacOs - with the other being my inablility to "pin" my dock to one of my monitors, overriding the swap functionality. Thanks!
  - dasb 6y ago
    I've always pictured scrolling as moving a camera or visor over a static sheet.
- dustincoates 6y ago
  I'm the same as you, and it also took me a while to figure out why it was. The best explanation I could come up with is that it felt like I was moving the scroll bar with a scroll wheel, while that's clearly not the case when I'm using a trackpad or touch.
quenix 6y ago
I like Natural Scroll on the trackpad because my mind somewhat subconsciously maps the page onto the trackpad. Then, scrolling on the trackpad is like dragging the page up or down with my fingers. Mentally, the same mapping does not happen with a scroll wheel. So it’s a weird psychological block when I scroll down with a scroll wheel and the page goes up.
stnmtn 6y ago
I have always used a mouse when scrolling down makes the page go down, and on the trackpad scrolling down makes the page go up. It makes sense to me somehow, probably because I'm used to the input method of a phone's scrolling and so that transfers to a trackpad naturally.
snissn 6y ago
I get confused about which is natural and which is normal scroll but I have subconscious muscle memory, so if this tools helps people that for whatever reason were trained to have this subconscious muscle memory / why not? It's all pretty arbitrary anyway. Aren't your eyes bolted on upside down and your brain has a layer that inverts it?
- jaywalk 6y ago
  Our eyes aren't "upside down" it's just that light passing through a convex lens (the front of our eyes) gets flipped.
pantaloony 6y ago
I map “natural” on the touchpad to moving the page. I map “natural” on the scroll wheel to moving the scrollbar. Both are “natural”, but opposite.
Tyr42 6y ago
I only use trackpads on osx, but I use scroll wheels on linux and windows too. So I'm fine with whatever on the trackpad, but I need my mouse to stay consistent with the rest of the world.
jabroni_salad 6y ago
When I use a mouse, I always expect pulling the scrollwheel towards me to move the page downwards. That is just how it has been my entire life. However, when I use a touch surface such as a trackpad or touchscreen I like to push the page up. disclaimer: not a magic mouse user.
marcosdumay 6y ago
"Interaction method" here is a name for entirely different stacks starting from the hardware that just happen to be abstracted the same way by the OS. Why would people be confused by some piece of hardware not behaving like some completely different piece of hardware?
rkudeshi 6y ago
For me, it’s because my muscle memory for a mouse (which I use primarily on my work Windows computer, occasionally on my Mac laptop) is different than a trackpad (which I only use with my Mac laptop). Unfortunately, macOS doesn’t let you set different options for each.

muli_d 6y ago

Thank you. I've been using Scroll Reverser[1], but it hasn't been updated to fully support Catalina (it works, but the installation process was not updated to request the permissions in Catalina). I'll check out UnnaturalScrollWheels to see if it's a good replacement. [1] https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/ https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/

aptgetrekt 6y ago
You're welcome! Scroll Reverser no longer working well in Catalina is one of the main reasons that led me to create my own solution to the problem.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
servercobra 6y ago
As far as I could tell Scroll Reverse reversed all scrolling, so when I walked away from my desk, I'd have to kill it to use my trackpad normally.
- buffin 6y ago
  You can control this in the preferences: pasteboard.co/JjBKDWf.png
- aeyes 6y ago
  There is a separate option to reverse scrolling of the trackpad, works flawless here.

saagarjha 6y ago

I used to use something like this for my mouse, but started using a trackpad full-time so I didn’t need it anymore. Recently I’ve started using a mouse again, but without something like this installed, and now I feel like I like natural scrolling for mice too :/ Must be something you get used to.

aptgetrekt 6y ago
I could probably get used to it if I used only macOS, but I use Linux and Windows most of the time and switching scroll directions when I use macOS gets frustrating. That and physical scroll wheels scrolling "unnaturally" is what seems natural to me, @dashwav explains why I feel that way quite well in their reply to another comment.

behnamoh 6y ago

I like natural scroll so much I even use AutoHotkey on Windows to emulate the same behavior. Unfortunately, it reverses everything, so, say, volume scroll is reversed too. I'm sure there are workarounds about that. Unlike some comments here, when I move from TrackPad to mouse, I still think of the scroll wheel as the document, so natural scroll makes more sense for me, personally. The only thing I would get rid of in TrackPad is the "bounce effect" when you reach the Home/End of the document. Also, many documents are perfectly fit in the app window (e.g. Preview) but still the horizontal scroll moves them around, which is annoying (try opening a new PDF in Preview and use left/right arrow keys to move to next page; it scrolls the document horizontally slightly!)

aptgetrekt 6y ago
You can actually change the scroll direction of a mouse in Windows with a registry edit: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-other_settings/reverse-the-scroll-of-mouse/334669c3-8a45-4600-830a-8df628d7415e https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10...
- behnamoh 6y ago
  Thank you, yes I tried that and it works.
cyann 6y ago
Same here, I've got this one-liner in my system config: Inverse or reverse mouse wheel (natural scrolling), reboot or unplug the mouse. Must be run in an admin powershell console. Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\HID\\\Device` Parameters FlipFlopWheel -EA 0 | ForEach-Object { Set-ItemProperty $_.PSPath FlipFlopWheel 1 }
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  I used to use this, but I found that it sometimes got disabled when I unplugged and replugged my mouse (and always if I later got a new mouse). I eventually gave up.

Kimitri 6y ago

Logitech Options has an option to set the scroll direction. As I switch between a trackpad and a Logitech mouse the scroll direction is always set to whichever feels ”expected” to the pointing device I’m using. It was a joyous day to discover the setting in Logitech Options. :)

henryaj 6y ago

Thank you thank you thank you. Was literally looking for something like this earlier today!

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

I miss when apps like this were built as preference panes. An app that does nothing but change an OS setting—and whose user interface exists purely to adjust those settings—does not belong in my applications folder, and certainly not in my menu bar. Such apps ought to live in System Preferences, alongside other, well, system preferences. And what do you know, Apple built a way for third party developers to do just that! Preference panes used to be the norm, but that seems to have changed over the last decade. It pains me to admit that an app is probably the right approach nowadays, because when everyone else is doing things one way, users will expect you to do that too. One more way that OS X's UI metaphors have regressed...

mikestew 6y ago
Are OS X's metaphors slipping, or are they just being folded into how developers write their apps, or consumers use them? I ask because of the iOS Settings app: it used to be that was the place one changed the settings of an app, not in the app itself. IOW, kinda like the macOS System Preferences panes...sorta. Point is, it can appear that the OS settings pane/app/whatever is for stuff Apple controls, and the rest has to go in an app or menubar. I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying that Apple has let the messaging get really confused.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  > I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying that Apple has let the messaging get really confused. Right—part of Apple's job is to create an environment where the "correct path" is clear and developers want to follow it. Either Apple used to do a better job, or else developers did. And, consider: • Apple encourages developers to distribute via the Mac App Store as much as possible. • Preference Panes cannot be sold in the Mac App Store. • In Catalina, all Safari extensions must be installed from the App Store as individual apps. • New Notification Center widgets are always installed as applications. Old Dashboard widgets never were. I would say that taken together, the clear implication from Apple is that apps are the way to go. And it all comes back to the Mac App Store, which Apple wants to push that at all costs. Evidently, they either actively don't want to sell non-apps in the store, or they don't care enough to build that functionality. There are probably times when Apple's patterns are just wrong and the community coalesces on something better—I can't think of any, but it has probably happened, or will some day. But I do not think this is one of those times, because if you step back, using an app does not make objective sense. (P.S. It's interesting to note that Apple's own iOS apps tend to have far fewer in-app preferences, in favor of sticking stuff in the Settings app.)

exabrial 6y ago

Why this was this change ever touted as "innovative"?

mikestew 6y ago
Do you have a URL where this is touted as "innovative", since you used quote marks? Because I believe it was introduced as a way to be consistent with iOS and how users scroll using that OS. No one was filing patents on this one, however.
- nicky0 6y ago
  Quite right. It wasn't really touted as anything. It just showed up in OS X 10.7 in 2010.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Nit: Lion was released in 2011, it was just presented in 2010.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
abraxas 6y ago
Because the Moore’s law has petered out and software bloat reached unimaginable levels and is incomprehensible to its authors thus we are getting “innovations” of this sort. Hey, did you see the new animated emoji pack the new version is shipping with? Really should check it out!

rsweeney21 6y ago

This is awesome! Thank you so much for making this! Every day I have to relearn how to scroll when I switch back and forth from my Mac and Windows machines. It frustrated me that the scrolling direction of two completely different input mechanisms were tied together. Thanks again!

marblessubtext 6y ago

Disabling acceleration is a big feature here, again something that makes sense on a trackpad but does not on a scroll wheel. It's infuriating switching between Linux/Windows/macOS _with the same mouse_ and only macOS has acceleration. Logitech Options doesn't even give acceleration Also along these lines of bizarre defaults, I don't remember how but I had to change key press settings to allow for repeated presses. Apparently the default behavior is to give you accent character options. Then from there I had to change the interval/initial timings to be closer to Linux/Windows as well. Of course now I'm paying the price with the dreaded repeat inputs on this keyboard

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
> Disabling acceleration is a big feature here, again something that makes sense on a trackpad but does not on a scroll wheel. Ah, but it makes sense on Apple scroll wheels! I think that's why they never added a built-in option to disable it. Nowadays the Magic Mouse doesn't even have a physical scroll wheel, but even on the Mighty Mouse, the scroll wheel was a little ball that could roll in any direction and didn't have notches, so acceleration made sense. Acceleration + notches are what do not go together.
- aptgetrekt 6y ago
  I think the magic mouse is treated like a trackpad under the hood so all the gestures work. If someone with a magic mouse tried to uncheck the natural scrolling box under mouse they'd be confused as to why it didn't change so that could be why the two settings are "linked".
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    ...right, that also makes sense with how some other tools behave. So this applies more to the Mighty Mouse, which is what the wheel acceleration curve feels optimized for IMO.
  - grishka 6y ago
    Also there's this app called MagicPrefs that allows you to bind things to gestures, including rebinding the system ones. I use it to bind three-finger click as middle click and at this point I can't fathom not having it. It supports all kinds of Apple trackpads and the magic mouse. This implies that all touch gestures, regardless of the shape of the device, share most of the underlying code.

cletus 6y ago

So I like Mac hardware and to this day for reasons I cannot fathom, I still consider the Macbook trackpad to be the only usable incarnation of this technology I've ever seen. This goes beyond hardware too as it seems like integration into the OS is a key factor. Touch pads still feel kludgy on Windows and Linux (to me at least). Even on Mac hardware. But there are certain UX fails by Apple I cannot comprehend and this is one of them. I remember when this changed. It was years ago now. Apple decided the previous way of doing things was unnatural and just reversed it. If you want it the "unnatural" way you could use a setting. But the inability to split how the trackpad worked and how a scroll wheel worked is nothing short of pigheadedness ("no, it's the users who are wrong" to paraphrase Principal Skkinner). Sadly this isn't an isolated example. The earlier iPads had an orientation lock physical switch on them. I love this feature. And then Apple decided this was "inconsistent" with the iPhone (which had no such switch) and removed it. I mean the switch was obviously still there but now it did something completely useless. I think it muted the iPad instead? If you wanted this you could just hold down the volume down button. Then they briefly added back the option of getting the old behaviour but that only lasted briefly before that option and ultimately the switch were entirely gone. I used the orientation lock all the time and I'm still dark about it. Another: a Bluetooth keyboard or trackpad connected to the laptop by USB will automatically pair. Great feature. Compare this to the Bose headphones I have, which are a total nightmare as soon as you pair to more than one device to the point where I've installed homebrew packages and scripts to disconnect Bluetooth when I close the lid of my Macbook (who decided it was a good default to pair to a Macbook with the lid closed vs one with its lid open? I mean does anyone even use pairing to a closed Macbook?). The problem? There's a popup I need to dismiss saying "This trakcpad is now wirelessly connected to your computer". Great. I don't care. I don't ever want to see this message again. Is there an option for that? No! I find full screen mode for apps great. I often have it set up so my IDE is one screen and I can swipe left and right between my main desktop and my IDE. The problem? If your mouse gets near the top of the screen a menu bar appears, often obscuring the top of your IDE so you have to walk this fine line between getting high enough on the screen but not too high. I have a 32" 4K monitor. I'm fine with the menu being visible all the time to avoid this. Really. Why don't I have that option? Years ago Chrome actually worked like that. Then it mysteriously disappeared. When I worked at Google I asked about this and was told something like it was considered a "bug" and it violated Apple's UI guidelines or something similar. So now we have the dumb version. Yet another: if you have multiple monitors, one of them is the "main" display. It has the dock. If you hit the bottom of the screen on a different monitor the dock will move. You can't turn this "feature" off. The best you can do is put the dock somewhere else. I don't want the dock somewhere else. What's really troubling about the last two is they really ignore the basic tenets of HCI in that the corners and edges of the screen are the easiest places to hit. Microsoft famously ignored this years ago when on Windows 9x the Start button was offset by a couple of pixels from the corner for no good reasons. No doubt some designer's opinionated sense of aesthetics. So, rant aside, thanks for making this utility. I know there have been other solutions to this as well. Part of me still hopes Apple sees reason and reverses their dumb decisions here.

flaxton 6y ago

I would never use this - it makes sense for the trackpad and mouse to work in the “natural” direction, just like on an iPhone and iPad screen. When I use Windows on a real PC then it confuses me, but that is rare I do that. So this makes no sense to me, but hey, whatever floats your boat ;-)

jedberg 6y ago

Since HN users tend to be more traditional in how they expect their computers to act, I wonder, how many people turn off "natural" scrolling the second they get a new Mac? I never understood why it was there. It makes a ton of sense for content to scroll in the direction your finger moves when your finger is touching the content, but I fail to understand why you'd expect it to move that way when using a touchpad or a mouse. Was this done specifically for users who were coming to Mac from iPad?

dhosek 6y ago
Arguably, the other direction is less intuitive. When Apple introduced this, it took me a couple days to adapt, but now if I ever end up on a Windows machine with the scroll setting in "unnatural" mode, it makes no sense.
pottertheotter 6y ago
I agree. I find "natural" to be very unnatural, and it seems to be everywhere now. It drives me nuts when I help my wife with something on her laptop. When/how did this become the norm, because it seems like it was not at one time? I suppose most computer users don't consider settings at all and just go with whatever the default is and eventually get comfortable using that, not knowing it's not "normal". But who made the change so that this became the new normal setting?
- netsharc 6y ago
  It was Apple who decided down was up one day. Nowadays on Windows with Synaptics trackpads, we have the same problem (well for me it is, as you say, you prefer it). It made sense because it relates to PgUp/PgDn or to consider that you're pulling the scrollbar indicator down. (oh, what's that, this UI element is hidden nowadays..?).

w0mbat 6y ago

I've used wheel mice on the Mac from the time the Microsoft USB wheel mouse came out, back when there was a Mac driver that controlled classic Mac apps by looking for scroll bars and sending events, licensed from an Italian developer. I myself added native wheel support to some major Carbon apps, and convinced other engineers to do it, as I was at Microsoft MacBU at the time. But anyway, when Apple decided that scroll wheels should work the other way around, I gave it a try. I soon acclimatized to it and never had to change the default again. I would recommend all Mac users try out the "natural" setting and see if you get used to it. Now explain why I HAVE to invert the y-axis in Halo on XBOX (any version of either). I tried but I can not adjust to the default.

haecceity 6y ago
I invert the y motion of my mouse too.

rootbear 6y ago

On my Dell XPS running Ubuntu, I have the touch pad set to "natural" scrolling but I also use a mouse and have that set to traditional scrolling. I find I like this combination a lot, so being able to set up my Mac the same way would be great. As for why I like them to be different, I think it's all about the tactile experience. I find using the trackpad to be very much like using a touch screen on a phone. In both cases, it's as if I'm manipulating the screen content directly with my finger. With the scroll wheel, it's a different tactile experience and the traditional behavior seems more "correct". Someone could do a nice human factors study on this.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
> As for why I like them to be different, I think it's all about the tactile experience. I find using the trackpad to be very much like using a touch screen on a phone. My personal experience is that after years of keeping the "natural" scroll setting enabled, my scroll wheel has gained some of that tactile feeling in my brain. It's like the wheel is the content, and I'm pushing it up and down with my finger. However, it definitely took longer for this to happen than with a TrackPad.
- rootbear 6y ago
  Interesting observation. I've never taken the time to try to retrain myself to use a mouse in natural mode. This is in part due to the fact that I am a Linux system administrator and I am often working on systems that aren't mine. I think it would be very confusing if the mouse on my Linux workstation worked one way and everyone else's worked differently.

frickenhamster 6y ago

My solution was SteerMouse. It allows me to individually set every scroll option and mouse speed and acceleration

baxuz 6y ago
I also use Steermouse so that I can actually bind the back/forward keys to CMD+[ / CMD+], while also disabling regular pointer acceleration alongside the scroll issues. I also don't think it runs as an accessibility service, but as a low-level driver. Downside is that it's not free.

mruszczyk 6y ago

Once I gave up on Scroll Revserser, I found Mos[1] as another option for this need. It just got a new v3 release and allows for toggleable smooth scrolling, as well as very granular scrolling options on top of the scroll reversing. I'm a big fan. [1]https://mos.caldis.me/ https://mos.caldis.me/

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

agentdrtran 6y ago

Disabling scroll acceleration is a godsend.

slowwriter 6y ago

Thank you! I needed this so much! Honestly can’t believe this is not default behavior in macOS.

etoulas 6y ago

I’m a happy user of ControlPlane since many years for exactly this purpose. > With ControlPlane you can intelligently reconfigure your Mac or perform any number of actions based on input from a wide variety of evidence sources […] https://github.com/dustinrue/ControlPlane https://github.com/dustinrue/ControlPlane

totetsu 6y ago

The difference in scrolling is quite jarring when first using MacOS after being familiar with other environments. I imagine many people googling how to fix it, only to find Apple called their way "natural scrolling" just to add insult to injury. [Don't you people have better things to downvote?]

dmalvarado 6y ago

God bless you. This has filled me with rage since lockdown. Can’t wait to try it tomorrow.

drinkcocacola 6y ago

"Moving the camera" vs "Dragging the document" Many years ago, when I was teachin my mother how to use the computer, I noticed something that I recalled the day Apple introduced the "Natural" Scroll thing. She was working on a Word document, so I told her that she didn't need to click the scroll bar, but to scroll directly using the mouse wheel. To my surprise, she moved the wheel in the "wrong" direction. And for some seconds she was wondering why the whole thing was "inverted". In that moment I thought that probably we were all taught "incorrectly", and maybe, just maybe, "intuitively" people will think about scrolling on the opposite way, but we ended up learning that it was not correct, adapting our minds to the already established behavior of the mouse wheel. The truth is. I embraced with happiness the "Natural" scrolling from Apple with the touchpad and the magic mouse on macOS, but also had a hard time getting used to this behavior with a regular mouse. I've been struggling since then, and I still use the "classic" scrolling with my Windows-based PC.

bitfroster 6y ago

Thank you for the app! I've created PR for brew cask, as I wanted to be able to add it to my dotfiles. https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/pull/86697 https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/pull/86697