In addition to being more flexible, such a settings interface would actually make configuring Scroll Reverser less confusing-between Lion’s own scroll-direction setting, Scroll Reverser’s main on/off setting, and the various settings for directions and device types, sometimes figuring out the right combination of settings to get your desired results feels like an LSAT question.Insty linked this, but it’s worth preserving.
For example, the non-Multi-Touch trackpads on older Mac laptops are treated as mice, rather than trackpads, as are the trackpads on some third-party keyboards with built-in trackpads or touchpads.Īnother is that your horizontal and vertical settings apply to every class of device (trackpad, mouse, or tablet) you’ve chosen to “reverse.” I’d like to see separate horizontal and vertical settings for each type of input device.
One is that Scroll Reverser depends on information from Mac OS X to determine the type of each device. You can also choose whether to reverse both horizontal and vertical scrolling, or just one or the other. (The Mouse category includes most trackballs.) In other words, if you want to keep Lion’s inverted scrolling for your trackpads and tablets, but use traditional scrolling when using a mouse or trackball, you can do so. Here you can choose which devices-trackpads, mice, and tablets-are affected by Scroll Reverser.
(Scroll Reverser affects only traditional scrolling it doesn’t affect other Multi-Touch gestures.)īut the Preferences sub-menu is where Scroll Reverser’s real utility lies. You can quickly disable Scroll Reverser by choosing Reverse Scrolling from the menu to uncheck it. By default, all scrolling is reversed (from whatever your System Preferences setting is) for all input devices. Launch Scroll Reverser, and its systemwide menu lets you quickly adjust your scrolling preferences.
(Count me in this group-I’ve mostly adjusted to the new way of scrolling on my trackpads, likely because it’s similar to the way I touch-scroll on my iPhone and iPad, but I can’t quite acclimate to it when using my mouse’s scroll wheel or my trackball’s scroll ring.) The second is that some people who like this new direction for vertical scrolling haven’t yet taken to inverted horizontal scrolling. The first is that there’s no way to configure Lion to use the new scrolling orientation with trackpads while maintaining traditional scrolling with mice and trackballs. But even among those who’ve adjusted to-or, heck, enthusiastically welcomed-this inverted scrolling, there are a couple persistent complaints. The initial furor over this change is starting to die down as people have either gotten used to the New Way or used Lion’s option, in System Preferences, to switch back to the Old Way. In other words, scrolling is backwards compared to how we’ve been doing it for the past decade and a half. In Lion, when you drag two fingers downward on a MacBook’s trackpad or Apple’s Magic Trackpad ( ), or spin your mouse’s scroll wheel towards you, the content of the current document or window scrolls down, as well. Among the many changes in Lion (Mac OS X 10.7), one of the most controversial is a new way of scrolling.