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Oh my god. In later Mac OS versions, scroll bars are set by default to appear only based on mouse/trackpad movement, which is a pity; many users probably don’t

Oh my god. In later Mac OS versions, scroll bars are set by default to appear only based on mouse/trackpad movement, which is a pity; many users probably don’t realise they can have scroll bars appear permanently, so they don’t have to time the mouseover action for the scroll bar to appear and then hope they’ll manage to grab it when they want to quickly scroll down a long list of elements. This... is me. For years I've been frustrated by recent versions of MacOS and the problem of the disappearing/impossible to grab scroll bar. And only by reading this article did I learn that you can make it stick around permanently. I guess, good for Apple for making that possible? But, holy crap, way to not communicate the existence of that capability to even sophisticated users.

steve_adams_86 6y ago
You’re not alone. This caught me by surprise last year too.
woah 6y ago
Why do you need to grab the scroll bar?
- jacobolus 6y ago
  Personally I find it is incredibly helpful to be able to see the scrollbar at all times, even if I primarily use a mouse scroll wheel, trackpad gesture, or keyboard for scrolling. The slight bit of horizontal screen space it takes in every window is a trivial cost in comparison to the value of knowing how tall the scroll is and where the viewing window is currently scrolled. (Note, it is also more effective to grab the scroller and drag it along the track vs. using other mouse/keyboard gestures in cases where the scroll is extremely tall or wide – anything more than about 20x the window size – and you want to move precisely to one particular part. I find this especially helpful when reading books or other long documents.) I wish user interface designers looked for more ways to provide unobtrusive extra information in parts of the screen I am not otherwise using.
- hrktb 6y ago
  I scroll log files and extracts a lot. Scrolling page by page would be craziness.
- pfranz 6y ago
  I think the lack of scroll bar goes with an assumption of a trackpad. It also gets rid of most of the context clues that a page goes off the screen or how long a page is. Without a trackpad (ignoring search), it's really difficult to scroll through a very long document or log.

steve_adams_86 6y ago

You’re not alone. This caught me by surprise last year too.

woah 6y ago

Why do you need to grab the scroll bar?

jacobolus 6y ago
Personally I find it is incredibly helpful to be able to see the scrollbar at all times, even if I primarily use a mouse scroll wheel, trackpad gesture, or keyboard for scrolling. The slight bit of horizontal screen space it takes in every window is a trivial cost in comparison to the value of knowing how tall the scroll is and where the viewing window is currently scrolled. (Note, it is also more effective to grab the scroller and drag it along the track vs. using other mouse/keyboard gestures in cases where the scroll is extremely tall or wide – anything more than about 20x the window size – and you want to move precisely to one particular part. I find this especially helpful when reading books or other long documents.) I wish user interface designers looked for more ways to provide unobtrusive extra information in parts of the screen I am not otherwise using.
hrktb 6y ago
I scroll log files and extracts a lot. Scrolling page by page would be craziness.
pfranz 6y ago
I think the lack of scroll bar goes with an assumption of a trackpad. It also gets rid of most of the context clues that a page goes off the screen or how long a page is. Without a trackpad (ignoring search), it's really difficult to scroll through a very long document or log.