Always Show Scroll Bars in Mac OS X Lion
The scrollbars in Mac OS X Lion are hidden until activated by use, this is the new default behavior that works very well if you primarily use a trackpad with your Mac. I use an external mouse with my Mac quite often though, and I find the hidden scrollbars to be annoying when I do. That’s my reason for bringing them back, but other people just like to see when content is available that needs to be scrolled to access, this tip will make both of us happy.
Set Scroll Bars to Display All the Time in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion
This will return scroll bar behavior to that which existed in 10.6 and prior, being always visible:
- Launch System Preferences from the Apple menu
- Click on General
- Look for ‘Show scroll bars’ and select the radiobox next to “Always”
Scrollbars are instantly visible with this change. You may want to take this tip one step further and adjust the behavior of clicking within the scroll bar too, but I find the default setting here of jumping to the next page just fine.
I prefer no scrollbars until they’re in use, very clean UI
I’d prefer to have the arrows on the top and bottom of the scroll bar where I’ve had them since I got my original Mac. Any way to do that?
Return the arrows together at both the top and bottom of the scroll bar the change is a form of elder abuse. The older people who use the mac are extremely irritated and upset at this change they have not changed to the new stile of mouse and have a gustier that involves one finger for apple. I might not be in the age group but I agree with them and give apple the same Gustier.
[...] Hidden Scroll bars: So i want to quickly scroll down or to the right.. i have to first scroll my wheel then grab the scroll bar indicator and drag it down. SLOW.After all this, I decided to format and go back to Snow Leopard. I hope someone builds a 3rd party version of spaces for Lion because eventually I will be forced to get it makes me sad. Makes me wonder if the guys at Apple are actually thinking about developers when they build this stuff. [...]
Thank you very much for the tip. As a developer, the hidden scrollbar is VERY annoying (but I think that most of mac “everything is clean and hidden” features are awful for developers
)
Not having the arrows on the scroll bar is a pain the pages do not move up and down cleanly.
Can we make the scroll bars wider and blue like they were on older Macs — I find the narrow grey ones horrible.
Whatever happened to ‘don’t fix it if it ain’t broke’ ..
Thanks!!!! I was hating the new “dissapearing scrollbars thing”
Is there no way to get the up and down arrows on the scrollbar (which I finally found) in OSX Lion? Using the scrollbar without arrows is a pain.
[...] you can set scrollbars to always display in windows, there is no option to show the actual scrollbar arrows anymore in Mac OS X Lion. A [...]
[...] you can set scrollbars to always display in windows, there is no option to show the actual scrollbar arrows anymore in Mac OS X Lion. A [...]
Having just purchased my lovely new MacBook Pro and having been used to Microsoft Windows for years, personally I believe the scrollbars default on all new Macs should be that they are visible – it simply makes it easier for us new users. My initial thoughts when I first tried scrolling was that the Mac was crap, but thankfully this excellent resource made it all very clear. Also, as an aside, the backspace key reads ‘delete’ which is a bit silly for a Mac and there is no actual separate ‘delete’ key – again for an ex Microsoft user – I miss that function terribly – BUT as I learn’t on another blog site, you can delete by pressing ‘fn’ and then ‘delete’. In a nutshell, I believe Apple need to be more aware of new user’s needs thus making the change from Microsoft to MacBook just that little more simple. Overall, I love my Mac and won’t be going back!!
[...] with a two-fingered swipe left or right. The feature works the same whether scroll bars are visible or not. Horizontal scrolling works with most native and cocoa apps, although some apps are pickier [...]
I guess I am the only one for whom this “easy fix” doesn’t work.
New MacBook Pro, and even after selecting “Always”, I get no scroll bars on anything.