Guides
Jul 20, 2011

How to Disable Inverted Scrolling on Mac OS X Lion

There's a video below on how to disable inverted scrolling!

There have been a ton of hype about the newly released Mac OS X Lion, but one thing Apple has tried to do with their brand new operating system is to give it more of a mobile feel. Because of everything Apple tried to do to make Mac OS X more like iOS is add in things like their mission control and inverted scrolling.

With the brand new inverted scrolling feature, lots of people weren't too happy with this new "feature". Basically, the inverted scrolling made it when you move down on your trackpad/mouse, it'll go up and vice versa, just like on any mobile device. Some people may like this feature but personally, I am no one of them.

To simply disable this feature, it might be somewhat confusing as Apple does not mention anything about "inverted" scrolling, like they did in the developer previews. Instead, they renamed it it "natural" scrolling. On the contrary, I do not feel "natural" scrolling is the perfect name for this feature, as it's only natural on a touchscreen device. Anyway, if you don't like this feature and you're one who wants to disable it, follow the steps below!

  1. Open up System Preferences
  2. Click on "Trackpad" (now the question remains, what will this be on a desktop computer with no trackpad? From my knowledge, this section should still be there, but if it's not there for you desktop users, give us a holler in the comments below)
  3. Go to the "Scroll & Zoom" tab (it's the one in the middle)
  4. At the very top of the list, you will see "Scroll direction: natural" and some more text below it. Disable it!
  5. You are now back to the normal method of scrolling! No restarts or anything like that, just uncheck the check box and you're all set!
Hopefully this helps anyone troubling to find out how to disable this feature on Mac OS X Lion. What do you think about the new inverted scrolling? Do you like it or hate it? Please leave your thoughts in the comments below!
Important: If you have a computer that does not support all the gestures, your trackpad settings will be different. Click on the "When using gestures to scroll or navigate, move content in the direction of finger movement" instead at the very top. If you are on a desktop computer without a trackpad, go under the mouse settings and click "Move content in the direction of finger movement when scrolling or navigating".  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbk5mF9URro

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