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A few releases ago OS X introduced scroll acceleration, which means if you keep scrolling in some direction, the speed of the scroll will be greater and greater. You cannot disable this from the UI. It is extremely annoying if you want to scroll through a long website or a long source code in an editor.

Until macOS Sierra you could disable this using DisableExtremeScrollAcceleration tool. But this tool is no longer working.

Is there any way to prevent the scroll acceleration?

gklka
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    ...& I've been loving accelerated scroll for years, can't live without it - proves nothing but horses for courses, I guess;-) [SteerMouse](http://plentycom.jp/en/steermouse/) can adjust scrolling behaviour amongst other things, depending on the mouse you use [there's a v5 currently in beta, a bit buggy but free for a while, so you can judge for yourself] – Tetsujin Sep 17 '16 at 18:27
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    I really hate it... have you tried scrolling a large list in a small 200px heigh container??? I'm going to train inner peace, focus and control with solitary monks for 10 years in order to scroll down 10 lines without wobbling the mouse wheel all the time! – DerpyNerd Apr 26 '17 at 08:49
  • System Preferences -> Accessibility -> Pointer Control -> Disable: Spring-loading delay – holzkohlengrill Nov 14 '22 at 10:12
  • No, spring loading means dragging something over an element which can be expanded (like a folder), and waiting until it expands. – gklka Nov 15 '22 at 11:08
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    I don't have enough rep to answer, but I found "Mac Mouse Fix" on a post on Reddit. It's free and works well for me, scrolling feels much more natural. https://mousefix.org/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/p9vqhu/comment/ha0o3rn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 – TheHud Jan 12 '23 at 09:09

9 Answers9

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I wrote a small program to fix this behavior: https://github.com/emreyolcu/discrete-scroll

You may download a binary here. It runs in the background and allows you to scroll 3 lines with each tick of the wheel.

Hayden Schiff
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Emre Yolcu
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    Thanks! For 2 days I was trying every piece of software but your small utility saved the day! – hambos22 Dec 03 '16 at 11:58
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    Thanks for this, I feel like Yosemite had some amount of inertia still but it sure beats it not doing anything for a "click or two" of the mousewheel. Oh Apple. – spacesuitdiver Dec 05 '16 at 21:11
  • This worked for me v10.12.1 and Logitech M500 mouse. – disperse Dec 13 '16 at 16:36
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    Download **[SmoothScroll](http://www.smoothscroll.net)** if you also want a smooth animated scrolling experience with your mouse wheel (you can also disable the acceleration or change it to your own liking) – gblazex Dec 14 '16 at 10:44
  • @galambalazs thanks, just bought SmoothScroll (I'm also using Steermouse to disable the pointer acceleration) – Matteo Mazzarolo Dec 27 '16 at 07:59
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    @Emre-Yolcu Thank god. It's pathetic that I have to download a whole set of little scripts just to make simple things like this work properly. – Julian H. Lam Jan 19 '17 at 16:18
  • Does the app need to be run each time you boot the computer (sorry, new to MacOS)? Or if the change is permanent, is there a way to "undo" it? – orrd May 09 '17 at 20:31
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    @orrd Yes, it does need to be run each time you boot. If you want this to be automatic you may go to System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Items and add DiscreteScroll to the list. If you want to undo the effect you may launch Activity Monitor, search for DiscreteScroll and force it to quit. I am planning to write a preference pane out of this program to make these operations more intuitive and include configuration options. – Emre Yolcu May 10 '17 at 22:09
  • @orrd You can use Smooze from my answer below. You can set it to open at Login and also decide the number of lines to move on each tick. Both features are free. Also, no nagging and no intrusive popups. – Segev May 19 '17 at 13:49
  • scroll slowly down twice, scroll quickly up twice to get back to where I was great utility to fix an infuriating behavior – inyourcorner Sep 03 '20 at 05:59
  • Thank you so much. This works perfectly. – David Given Jun 15 '21 at 20:29
  • There seem to be 3 versions: DiscreteScroll.app, 1L.app, and 2L.app. What's the difference between each of the apps? – Max Well Aug 01 '21 at 23:45
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    @MaxWell Respectively they scroll 3, 1, 2 lines with each tick of the wheel. At some point a few people wanted to change the number of lines scrolled (without installing Xcode) so I uploaded these binaries in the repository. – Emre Yolcu Aug 05 '21 at 16:18
  • I just noticed: This can be installed with `brew install discretescroll` using [homebrew](https://brew.sh). – fiedl Aug 10 '21 at 18:50
  • Note this `discrete-scroll` doesn't work completely on Chrome browser. Even though it does turn off acceleration of scroll, it still keeps the animation of starting and ending of scroll, which give you a lag of each scroll. On the other hand, Smooze does not have this issue. – Louis Yang Sep 02 '21 at 21:59
  • @LouisYang I think the behavior you describe is more appropriately fixed at the level of Chrome instead. I do not use Chrome, but a quick search shows that its smooth scrolling behavior can be disabled via the setting at `chrome://flags/#smooth-scrolling`. – Emre Yolcu Sep 15 '21 at 18:45
  • @EmreYolcu Right, `chrome://flags/#smooth-scrolling` will work for Windows. But the flag is not available on macOS. – Louis Yang Sep 16 '21 at 20:45
  • As of 2022, this was still the best/easiest fix that worked for me on macOS Monterey version 12.0.1 . Thank you! – electromechanick Jan 10 '22 at 21:17
45

After many years of frustration with macOS & wheel mice, I've developed Smooze. You can use this app free for disabling acceleration ( you would only pay to use other features of the app)

  • toggle the "Animate Scroll" to Off and you're good to go.

enter image description here

Smooze website

Segev
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  • @Winterflags What's the mouse model? I've tested it on several Logitech mice including MX Master, Performance Mouse MX and some other cheaper modals without any issues without LCC installed. This issue was also never reported to me by the Smooze users. You should try to update LLC or better yet, remove it completely. – Segev Apr 03 '17 at 11:59
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    @Winterflags It might be a problem with Sierra. Earlier versions had a bug that effected scrolling & Logitech mice. I'm currently on 10.12.3 with the same mouse, LLC not installed & Smooze installed and everything is working as it should. – Segev Apr 03 '17 at 12:09
  • That's weird. I don't see a difference between Finder and other apps like Chrome \ Slack etc'.. There shouldn't be a difference. ( I don't have Pages installed) – Segev Apr 03 '17 at 12:20
  • Let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/56491/discussion-between-winterflags-and-segev). – P A N Apr 03 '17 at 12:25
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    THANK YOU. This is exactly what I was looking for. The default scroll wheel behavior drives me *ABSOLUTELY INSANE* on OSX, and I had given up on ever getting it to work as intended. This is going into my must-have tweak build for every version of macOS I run. – Gavin Apr 17 '18 at 22:40
  • Smooze breaks scrolling in XQuartz :( – Aido Jun 03 '19 at 22:10
  • The app doesn't seem to work when the browser is in full screen. – Louis Yang Jun 13 '19 at 05:19
  • NVM, this is due to the bug in Dock of macOS. Restarting the Dock fix the problem. – Louis Yang Jun 13 '19 at 08:04
  • Be careful with this one. I removed the `Accessibility` permission from it and it completely disabled both my mouse & keyboard inputs. I regained control of my keyboard only by holding `control` + `command` at the same time (didn't work always) and managed to restart the system using terminal. – smukov Jun 24 '19 at 15:37
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    Weird..keyboard can't be disabled by Smooze. Anyway, removing Accessibility permission (while the app is running) is fixed in version 1.7.3 I just released. – Segev Jun 24 '19 at 17:28
  • This helps a lot! Before this app scrolling with my mouse wheel was so bad that I was literally clicking to drag a scroll bar up and down to avoid the manic mouse jitter. Now I can use my mouse wheel again :) – user3474985 Oct 07 '19 at 16:50
  • Is it just me or the free version is not offering this functionality anymore? Was working till one day wasn't. – Tauri28 Jun 15 '22 at 22:37
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    @Tauri28 it's just you. – Segev Jun 16 '22 at 17:43
  • THANKS! macOS a bit less annoying now! : ) – arod Sep 21 '22 at 19:48
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Here's what I've found, so far it seems kinda working:

http://dolphm.com/disable-mouse-pointer-acceleration-and-scroll-wheel-acceleration-in-os-x/

Type into the Terminal:

defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.scrollwheel.scaling -1

Then relogin.

gklka
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    What is the default value and how do I revert if I no longer want this change? – wenbert Oct 10 '16 at 19:07
  • You can always delete it with `defaults delete`. – gklka Oct 10 '16 at 19:09
  • This doesn't work even after login. The sensitivity of the affected app is still too high compared to the unaffected ones. – wenbert Oct 10 '16 at 19:16
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    This seems to have worked for me possibly *in combination* with disabling inertia and acceleration re the settings app paths given in other answers. Unchecking "Spring-loading delay" in the same settings area may also have done it. – r_alex_hall Jul 18 '17 at 15:55
  • @wenbert `defaults read .GlobalPreferences com.apple.scrollwheel.scaling` gives me `0.75`. – Tom Hawtin - tackline Dec 15 '20 at 22:32
  • This worked perfectly in OSX 11.5.2 Big Sur. Paste the value into a terminal then logout then back in. Scroll acceleration is gone. Thanks – Jake Wilson Jun 23 '22 at 17:39
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System Preferences>Accessibility>Mouse & Trackpad>Trackpad Options>Scrolling>Without Inertia

Sky D.
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  • Welcome to Ask Different. We like answers to be more than just a single line. Ideally, you want to explain why your answer is *right." It also helps to provide links, citations, and/or screen shots. Please review our help section [How to Answer](http://apple.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer) on writing good answers to questions – Allan Oct 07 '16 at 00:46
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    The question was about scroll acceleration not interia. They are different things. – gklka Oct 07 '16 at 07:57
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    That option is not available if you use a mouse. – Jayden Lawson Nov 12 '16 at 23:20
  • Does this option no longer exist? – Alec Jacobson Sep 30 '21 at 23:42
6

Try USB Overdrive. I was having the same problem as you and this fixed it. It works with MacOS Sierra.

Credit to this post

Community
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    Welcome to Ask Different. Please provide more information about what USB Overdrive does to resolve the issue, like what settings need to be set, etc., so the answer is more useful. – tubedogg Sep 21 '16 at 02:17
  • Thanks! I had scroll wheel issue after upgrading to macOS Sierra. I just installed the USB Overdrive (without any settings). And, my logitech wireless mouse just works on macOS Sierra as before ! – Tsuneo Yoshioka Sep 22 '16 at 14:20
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I don't have the rep to upvote or comment on Sky D's post, but it was spot on:

For trackpad: System Preferences>Accessibility>Mouse & Trackpad>Trackpad Options>Scrolling>Without Inertia

For mouse: System Preferences>Accessibility>Mouse & Trackpad>Mouse Options>Scrolling>Without Inertia

Inertia in images

Michael Diedrick
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    No, I've already said multiple times, that scroll interia and scroll acceleration are two different things. The first one is responsible for scrolling and decelerating the content when you lifted your fingers from the touchpad/Magic Mouse and the latter one accelerates the scroll speed when you keep scrolling in a given direction. – gklka Oct 13 '16 at 13:26
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    I have a feeling this scrolling interia dropdown no longer exists with certain mouse vendors since Yosemite. My G400s does not have this so I had to use the "discrete scroll" application as mentioned in another answer. – spacesuitdiver Dec 05 '16 at 21:13
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    There's no inertia dropdown in my Sierra 10.12.5 (Logitech G600). – JavaRunner Aug 15 '17 at 01:13
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macOS Sierra introduced a scroll wheel deadzone where input would be ignored unless you scrolled at a minimum speed. Scrolling the wheel one notch at a time would not produce any movement on the screen. This deadzone made people scroll the wheel faster than before, thus hitting the acceleration threshold even faster (though it's always been there). The scroll wheel deadzone has been removed in the 10.12.2 public betas.

With defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.scrollwheel.scaling -1, there should be no scroll wheel acceleration in apps (that use native scrolling).

Wowfunhappy
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Monstieur
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2

I found the "fix" for my Logitech mouse.

  1. System Preferences
  2. Control Center (available when you install Logitech control center)
  3. Select your mouse and click "configure".
  4. Select mouse wheel.
  5. On the bottom, there is a "acceleration" label with a slider. Set it to "null" or "max" (I can't see the difference.)

I also had an issue with my back/forward buttons. Within the same control panel, I had to reconfigure them as "key strokes" of "cmd + left arrow" and "cmd + right arrow".

Edit: Logitech released an updated version of their control center, which fixes the issue.

Finch_Powers
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  • I had the problem with my Logitech M585, I tried everything in all the answers but to no avail. Turns out all I had to do was open Logi Options, go to Point & Scroll, then set the scrolling speed to minimum. It finally removed acceleration for good. – AgentRev Nov 25 '21 at 22:10
0

Alternatively you can use SteerMouse. I've been using this for a few years. It costs $20, but for me it was worth it. Default mouse acceleration settings always annoy me.

Anyway, after install:

  1. Open it up via System Preferences -> SteerMouse.
  2. Select the 'Scroll' tab.
  3. Click 'Roll Up, and in the next dialog choose Mode = Linear.
  4. Do the same for 'Roll Down'.

Pics below:

Scroll Tab

Roll Up Dialog

Evan Kuhn
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    Thanks for the idea, but I don't really want to give up smooth scrolling for disabling scroll acceleration. As I can understand, SteerMouse does scrolling by emulating cursor keys. – gklka Oct 07 '16 at 07:58