I don’t know any other OS that uses natural scrolling by default. why is it the default scroll setting in Ubuntu? Can you set it to traditional setting by default like most people use? thanks.
Why are you asking it here? You should ask on a Ubuntu support channel.
Why not? it’s related to the development of the desktop environment - Gnome, Not to Ubuntu itself.
I don’t know any other place I can post it. let me know if it’s related to ubuntu itself and will be best if you can add link where I can post.
Ubuntu can change any default setting that comes from upstream.
That make sense,
But maybe it doesn’t touch this setting and the change can be in the upstream.
Are you referring to mouse scroll, or touchpad scroll?
Anyway, macOS defaults to natural scrolling. I think some Windows devices might as well, depending on their touchpad driver. The Surface devices defaulted to natural at one point. All touch screens always use natural scrolling, and touchpads are basically touchscreens in terms of how you do gestures with them.
macOS actually goes further and defaults mice to do natural scrolling as well. This is likely because all of Apple’s mice are touch mice. Though, IMO, they should be able to detect their own mice and change the default only for their own mice.
GNOME defaults to use natural scrolling on touchpads and traditional on mice. If you think of it in terms of the spacial model, the defaults make sense. Imagine a sheet of paper sitting on your desk.
- For a touch screen, you’re touching the sheet of paper directly and dragging it around with your finger. When you drag your finger up, the sheet of paper moves up along with it, and we call this “scrolling down”. When you drag your finger down, you drag the sheet of paper down, and we call this “scrolling up”.
- A touchpad is similar to a touchscreen. You’re touching the sheet of paper directly with two fingers and dragging it around
- A mouse is reversed because of the wheel. The wheel rolls, so when you move the top of the wheel downwards, the underside of the wheel moves up. Since the underside of the wheel is what touches the sheet of paper, the spacial model is consistent. You drag the top of the wheel down, this drags the underside of the wheel up, this drags the sheet of paper up, and thus you’re scrolling down. Similarly, you drag the wheel up, this drags the underside of the wheel down, which drags the sheet of paper down, and thus you’re scrolling up.
- Apple’s touch mouse lacks a scroll wheel. No wheel means that it makes no intuitive sense why dragging the content down actually moves it up. Thus, natural scrolling is on.
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Thanks for the response!
I’m talking about touchpad(s) and mouse(s).
I know the theory that it should be similar to touchscreen of our mobile phones like swiping down moves up. However the touchpad is not ON the screen. it’s on the touchpad. you LOOK on the screen. those - it doesn’t make sense to treat the touchpad like a paper / touchscreen.
You look on the screen, you swipe on the touchpad down, and you see the cursor moving up rather than down. it doesn’t make sense.
You think like that because you were used to do it like that 15 years ago.
If touch/trackpads used to behave “natural” since the beggining, you won’t even be thinking about this.
From an objective PoV, “natural” is called like that because feels… natural: you are dragging content and moving it with your fingers, that’s the expected behavior.
Everything else is just a matter of taste and habits.
However the touchpad is not ON the screen
The spacial model behaves as though it is. Imagine a laptop with a 180 degree hinge. When you push the screen completely flat, we’re back to the situation I described before
When you stand the screen back up at a 90 degree angle, the spacial model really hasn’t changed. You can think of it like a sheet of paper sliding up and down a corner, rather than a flat desk. It works out the same. And same thing when going from a laptop to a desktop.
it doesn’t make sense to treat the touchpad like a paper / touchscreen.
An uncontroversial example of gestures treating the touchpad like a touchscreen: pinch-to-zoom! Pinch to zoom only really makes sense if your mental model is that you’re touching the content. The same works on a trackpad, because a trackpad is supposed to behave like a touch screen for the purposes of gestures.
If touch/trackpads used to behave “natural” since the beggining, you won’t even be thinking about this.
Older tackpads had edge scroll zones, where the mental model was that your finger drags around the scroll bar, not the content directly.
When these went away and were replaced with multi-touch gestures, I guess nobody put much thought into the fact that the traditional scroll direction doesn’t fit into a mental model where you interact with the content.
Can you set it to traditional setting by default like most people use
First: is there any evidence that the traditional setting is the one most people use?
Second: As Joaquín pointed out, for people who are used to the traditional way, natural scrolling will feel backwards and wrong. But that’s why it’s a setting! I think it’s appropriate for the defaults to use the intuitive touch gestures, and then let people reconfigure their system if they happen to be used to the reverse.
Similarly, if you’re used to macOS, where the default is to use “natural” scrolling on mouse wheels (which is just as much inconsistent with the spacial model as traditional scrolling on touchpads), you can turn on natural scrolling on your mouse wheel.
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windows and kde do too, and touchscreen apps with emulated pointer such as termux:x11