You Can Set Different Scrolling Directions for Your Mac’s Mouse and Trackpad
Scrolling is a hot topic for people using MacBooks. Some people prefer natural scrolling on a trackpad. Natural scrolling means that if you swipe up with two fingers on the trackpad, your Mac will scroll down. When you swipe down, it will scroll up. This may seem counterintuitive, but it’s similar to how you might move a piece of paper in real life.
Your Mac has natural scrolling enabled by default, which means you’ll scroll in the opposite direction to your finger movement. Some people prefer this type of scrolling, but if you’re used to Windows, you might want to disable it.
Additionally, there are people like me who enjoy natural scrolling on a trackpad, but prefer non-inverted scrolling when using a physical mouse (or vice versa). MacBooks by default only allow you to select one option for all inputs, so to enable this you’ll need Scroll Reverser, a free app that lets you set up different scroll directions for your trackpad and physical mouse.
Once you install the app, it will ask for accessibility permissions, allowing it to track which device you’re using and set the correct settings for you. Grant these permissions. Scroll Reverser will appear in the menu bar. Select an application and go to Settings . Then check the “Enable scroll reverse” checkbox and configure the settings. I like to include both “Reverse Vertical” and “Reverse Mouse” . Before you finish, go into your Mac’s System Preferences , go to the Trackpad section, and turn Natural Scrolling on or off depending on what you want to use by default. I like to leave this on.
If these options are enabled, Scroll Reverser will do what you need: leave natural scrolling on the trackpad intact, allowing you to use non-inverted scrolling with the mouse.
This app has another feature that is useful for people who use a mouse on their Mac computers. You can customize the size of each “step” the scroll wheel makes. Quite often one step of the wheel will drag the page too far up or down, so it’s handy to use the Scroll Reverser to change this to your liking. To do this, go to the Scroll Reverser settings and move the slider to the step size . Increase or decrease this value until you get the scrolling behavior you want.
Now that that’s done, you might want to consider adding a nifty middle-click button to your Mac’s trackpad and mouse .