How to separate trackpad and mouse scroll settings on Mac

Hey, Apple! Scrolling on a trackpad and scrolling using the wheel on a mouse are different things!

If you’ve managed to find this post, you probably understand my frustration, but let me quickly summarise…

You use the trackpad on your Macbook regularly, two finger scrolling up slides the content up/down with your gesture. Mac calls this “Natural Scrolling” and it’s cool. I like it, my brain makes sense of it; all is right with the world.

However! You sometimes use your mouse, it has a scroll wheel and when you attempt to use it, scrolling is reversed. I hate it, my brain can’t make sense of it and it feels like the world is ending.

What you might expect is that you simply turn off natural scrolling in the mouse settings. Nope! This turns off natural scrolling for the trackpad too and makes that even more weird. “Hey, Apple! This is total madness!!”

Reversing “Natural Scroll” on Mac for mouse only

What’s the solution? “Scroll Reverser for MacOS!”

Download Scroll Reverser. Open up the ZIP and drag the app into your Applications directory. Open up “Scroll Reverser” and you’ll be prompted that it is now running. Tweak the settings to get things working how you want, this depends whether you have natural scrolling on or off in your mouse and trackpad settings.

In my case I have natural scrolling off and my Scroll Reverser settings look like this:

Problem solved!

A big “thank you” to Nick Moore for making this app. Please consider donating if his app prevents you from throwing your expensive mouse at the wall.

//Matt

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