How To Scroll On a Mac

New Mac users sometimes have trouble with scrolling. You can scroll using a trackpad, mouse, the keyboard or scroll bars. Learn how and see some preferences you can change.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's look at different ways to scroll on a Mac. 
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So one of the most frequently asked questions online about Macs is how do you scroll. Now scrolling works a little differently on a Mac than it does on windows so this explains why so many people look for that. It's because they're switching from Windows to Mac and they have having trouble getting used to how Macs scroll.
So here I have a typical webpage where I need to scroll to see all the content. The primary way you scroll depends on which device you have. If you have a trackpad or a mouse. So let's say you have a MacBook with a Trackpad or you have an iMac and you have a magic trackpad instead of a mouse on your desk. To scroll then you would use two fingers on the trackpad and move them up or down on the trackpad. So I could do that right here. Scrolling up, scrolling down. Now how about if you have a mouse. Well, it depends on the type of mouse. If you have an Apple mouse then the entire surface is touch sensitive. All you need to do is use one finger and scroll up and down on the surface of the mouse. Do it the same natural way as you would do it on a trackpad. So moving your finger up the mouse will push the page up and down will push the page down.
Now for some the direction of scrolling using a trackpad or mouse may not seem right. It's the opposite of how you might have been used to using it in Windows. It's called natural scroll direction and it's doing it the same way that you scroll on an iPhone or an iPad using your finger on the surface of the screen. But you have control over this. If you go into System Preferences and then you go to either Trackpad or Mouse, depending upon what you're using. Let's start with Trackpad. You see under Scroll & Zoom there is Scroll Direction Natural. It shows you an example there on the right and you could see exactly what happens when you scroll with two fingers. You could turn this Off and it will reverse the direction. Now why even have an option to reverse it. Well, many years ago the reverse direction was the normal direction and scroll bars were the norm. The scroll bar would move in the opposite direction of the actual content. We'll look at that in a minute.
Now if you have a Mouse you go to Mouse instead of trackpad and you see under Point and Click you've got Scroll Direction. It shows you an example of using an Apple mouse and scrolling with one finger either Natural or if you turn this Off you could see it doing the opposite way. Now if you have another type of mouse, say one with a scroll wheel or some other way of scrolling then your Mac will use that and you may have different controls here in System Preferences as well.
Now another way to scroll is using Scroll Bars. Notice there is no scroll bar here on the right. But if I start scrolling you see it appears. Now it will stay there for a few seconds after I stop scrolling and then disappear again to give me the maximum amount of space to see content. But if I am scrolling and I move my cursor quickly over to the right the scroll bar stays there and I can now use it. I can click and use it as a scroll bar the same way scroll bars have been used for decades. So I can grab the scroll bar indicator here and drag it down the screen. As I drag it down the text moves up. If I drag it up the text moves down. I could also click above or below the scroll bar to jump by page. Notice that the height of the indicator here is shown relative to the total document. So the total document is measured from the top of the scroll bar to the bottom of the scroll bar. The part that I'm viewing is the height of this indicator.
Now what happens if you want the scroll bar to not disappear. You have settings for that as well. If I go into System Preferences and I go to General you have a section here for Show Scroll Bars. An Automatic or When Scrolling means that it appears only when you start scrolling. The only difference is Automatic will show the Scroll Bar all the time if you're using a mouse that doesn't have the ability to scroll. So a non-Apple mouse that doesn't have a scroll wheel or anything to allow you to scroll. If you set it to Always it simply turns the scroll bar on and it's always there. So now you'll always see it on all scrolling content which is how things used to work many years ago. You could also change what happens when you click above or below the indicator in the scroll bar. You can have it go up or down by page or you can have it jump to the spot. So if I select Jump to the Spot and I move here and I click there you could see it jumps to that spot in the document.
Now there's another way to scroll and that's using the Keyboard. So when you're looking at content like a webpage, content where you're not entering in text, then the Up and Down arrow keys will act to allow you to scroll. So I can use the Down arrow key and I move down by approximately one line. I can continue to press the Down arrow key to move down, the Up arrow key to move up. Notice the scroll bar appears there whenever I use that. Now if I want to jump by a whole page I can use the Page Up and Page Down keys on my keyboard if I have them on my Keyboard. I happen to so if I use Page Down I jump by a page and Page Up I jump up by a page. I also have an End key which jumps to the end of the document and a Home key.
Now what happens if you don't have those keys on your Keyboard. Well you can use the arrows with some modifiers. So Option and then Down arrow will move by a page. Option Up arrow will move it up by a page. Command and Down arrow will move to the end of the document and Command and Up arrow to the beginning. You could also use the fn key and down and up to move by page. Pages works a little differently because you are in Text Entry mode. You have a cursor. You can see it blinking there before the first letter. Now the arrows will make the cursor move so down arrow will make the cursor move down by a line. Up arrow will make the cursor move up. Using Option Down arrow and Option Up arrow moves the cursor in different ways. So how do you go and simulate the page up and page down. Well, you could still do it using the fn key. So fn and down arrow will still go by page and fn and up arrow will go up by a page. The fn and right arrow will go to the end and fn and left arrow will go to the beginning.
So other than those differences for keyboard shortcuts things still work the same in Pages or any place where you're editing a document as they do in a place where you're not editing like Safari. So two fingers on the trackpad. One finger up and down on the mouse. It obeys the natural scrolling rules you've setup as well. Once you've started scrolling you've got the scroll bar here and you can grab that as well. Notice here the indicator is much larger because the document itself is is shorter and this is showing me how much of the document I'm seeing on the screen as compared to the entire length of the document.
So those are the basics for scrolling on the Mac. Hope you found this useful.

Comments: 4 Responses to “How To Scroll On a Mac”

Dirk Lenz

3 years ago

You may also use Space or Shift-Space to scroll within Safari pages.

Bob Earp

Gary, from previous posts I don't think you use a mouse much, but what about horizontal scrolling with a MagicMouse ? How can you control that or, preferably, switch it off as it does crazy things in some apps such as Mail on Catalina.
I've seen a previous thread on MacMost but it's 2 years old and did not end up with a solution.
Your suggestion of sending a Terminal command "defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.mouse MouseHorizontalScroll -bool NO" doesn't work

Gary Rosenzweig

Bob: I think if you really want to disable horizontal scrolling with Catalina, you'll need a third-party app and there seem to be several.

Bob EARP

Tnx Gary. After a search and much testing I found an app called "Scroll" (www.ryanhanson.dev/scroll) that seems to work like a charm !! Horizontal scrolling is only a problem with some apps, Apple Mail particularly whereby it is sooo easy to delete something without meaning to. With Scroll you can set the active area on the M-Mouse that allows horizontal scrolling to remain active but out of the normal area you place yr index finger, meaning you have to purposely set your finger to scroll.

Comments Closed.

How To Scroll On a Mac

Comments: 4 Responses to “How To Scroll On a Mac”

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