I’m back to using a Mac at work after almost four years on Windows. It’s a nice relief—though honestly, still not as good as running Linux.
Anyway, while setting up the Mac, I stumbled on what I’m calling a bug (because it is one) in the mouse and touch-pad settings. Both panes in the Settings app have their own toggle for what Apple calls “natural scroll.” For anyone unfamiliar, it simply flips the scroll direction. Since each device gets its own toggle, you’d naturally assume you can enable it for one and disable it for the other. Right?
Wrong. Apple disagrees. And even though this is clearly a bug—or at best a baffling design choice—there’s no fix from Apple.
Thankfully, open source comes to the rescue. In this case, thanks to Theron Tjapkes, who created a small utility that does exactly what macOS doesn’t: lets you set different scroll directions for your mouse and touch-pad. He named it Unnatural Scroll Wheels. Perfect.
The app just works. It lives quietly in the menu bar with a simple, unobtrusive icon and does exactly what it promises, exactly how it should.
Thank you, Theron.
(text written by me, retouched by ChatGPT, hopefully for better readability)
Yeah, although I love their hardware, especially since the transition to M chips, MacOS needs some love from Apple…