It seems that no matter where I go or who I run into one of the biggest complaints about Mac OS X Lion that I hear about is, “Where the #!@#!@# did Apple put those scroll bars?!?!?” This not so subtle change in Mac OS X Lion is driving people crazy.
So if you want your scroll bars and your sanity back pull up a chair, lean in close and I’ll tell you how to bring ’em back.
If you don’t have System Preferences open it now by clicking on the Apple menu, clicking System Preferences… and then click General.
Locate the section Show scroll bars and change the setting to Always. Now your scroll bars will always be visible like they were in Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
David W. Martin has more than 20 years of experience in the industry as a programmer, systems and business analyst, author, and consultant. David has written for CNET’s iPhoneatlas.com, MacLife.com, CultofMac.com, BYTE.com and recently for aNewDoman.net. He comes to Cult of Mac’s website with deep knowledge and passion for the all things Apple. Follow David on Twitter @david_w_martin or see what he’s up to now at davidwmartin.com.
72 responses to “Get Your Scroll Bars And Your Sanity Back In Lion [OS X Tips]”
People are seriously complaining about this?!?!? Why would you ever need them!?
This is almost as good as an acne cure. One can regain their sanity with the selection of a radio button? Seems a bit of an extreme headline.
I agree with @facebook-1249890167:disqus … what the heck people??? Scroll Bars??? It’s NOT that difficult to live without them!
system preferences > general > show scroll bars: always
you didn’t need to write an entire blog post about it. -_-
ok I can understand all the complaining for the “natural scrolling”. but for the scrollbars it’s too much.
ok I can understand all the complaining for the “natural scrolling”. but for the scrollbars it’s too much.
I know crazy huh? But think about all the new users that are buying up MacBook Airs that ship with Lion installed. Or my friend’s Grandmother. Or people that just like the solid feel of their scroll bars being there instead of ghostly apparitions that appear and disappear. lol.
Some people like visuals. Helps them to learn new tips errr tricks.
I’m curious, what input device are you using that doesn’t have scroll functionality?
They are not necessary at all, cultofmac writers run out of inspiration and they just need something to write about,
I really enjoy not having the scrollbars anymore, I hated them. Why the heck do we need those when we have a trackpad? :\
Given the number of posts we see about how to “fix” something in Lion, you’d think it was a total failure.
Ah, the mighty scrollbars. I must admit that one of the reasons I paid for os x Lion was to get rid of them. No scrollbars is the best feature ever ! Long past due that it was changed because they were taking space and looked out of place (I mean aqua was awesome six years ago).
…and some people like writing about nothing,
come on, the same lame tutorial twice in a month…, really?
If people is “asking” for it, just send them the link to the first tutorial, no need to re-write all over again.
Cult of Mac – why don’t you just go back to using SL? You obviously don’t like Lion. Just, please, quit trying to get everyone else on your bandwagon about the “flaws” that you see in Lion.
So hard to be cleaver. All the stupid people that aren’t like me make me so sick of them.
Yes, we should all be living in cleaver heaven. Not needing any info about what we already know.
Yes Yes Yes we do deserve to be let alone real bad.
Plenty of people hate and/or resist change. Too bad for them.
Apple didn’t eliminate scroll bars. They just de-emphasized them in Lion.
What I like about this is the general move towards multi-touch gestures–Back to the Mac stuff learned from iOS.
Instead of mousing over to the scroll bar, a two-finger swipe on the Magic Trackpad lets you move the page more naturally, as if it were an actual piece of paper you’re reading.
I LOVE the two-finger horizontal swipe gesture to flip pages. It’s so natural and intuitive.
The Magic Trackpad enables this “naturalness” by being there always handy on your physical desk, thereby not necessitating reaching up and out to swipe on the display.
I predict that Windoze 8 will be yet another spectacular failure if not MS’s swan song, because MS “only sorta” copied Apple–again. But this time they’ll have, like the dinosaurs, stuck themselves and Windoze users in a past eon, not just the “PC era.”
But then plenty of people hate and/or resist change. Too bad for them.
I’ve only ever used Lion as my first Mac is a 2011 Mini. Having mainly used Windows my entire OS life, along with a bit of Unix, (and being an IT geek) I was sceptical of moving to OSX… but I am now a convert, Lion is great.
Maybe it’s coming from Windows (although I like Windows 7 too), or maybe it’s a case of “you don’t miss what you never had”, as I’d never used Snow Leopard. I may have to force Snow Leopard on to my Mini just so I can join the chorus of complaints!! :)
I’ve also noticed since hanging round a few of the Mac dedicated websites, that Mac users don’t seem to like looking in System Preferences or figuring things out for themselves. Enabling scroll bars isn’t exactly hard, and yet it’s been posted twice on this site!! RTFM or maybe RTFSysPrefs?
wow, could you please stop bashing against lion. just because it isn’t as it was before, it’s not something that needs to be fixed. why did you upgrade if you hate change, cultofmac crew? I love the missing scrollbars, I think it’s one of the best features of lion, honestly. and certainly I don’t need an entire blogpost plus twitter message for a simple system preferences setting that everyone should be able to find.
Ryan I like Lion a lot – read my review at http://www.BYTE.com, but we have to cater to all kinds of readers at all levels. So please take this into consideration. Thank you. – DM
it was a bit of an overreaction, but at least this guy has posted a solution for one of his frustrations with lion, instead of pointlessly b!tching about it like so many other CoM writers seem to be doing these days — did anyone else read the article a few weeks back entitled “F@C! Lion”?…. eesh. That author was proof that not everyone can find these things under settings :(
personally I have never liked scrollbars, they are ugly and waste space, but hey — different strokes.
if a person is capable enough of upgrading their mac to lion, then they should be able of going into system settings and fixing this without the help of a walkthrough like this.
but assuming that it is even possible for a person to be dumb enough to not be able to figure out this brain-bender — why would they go searching through Cult of Mac’s archives to find the solution when they could just google/bing/youtube it? There have been guides for making lion look like leopard before Lion was even released — this isn’t news.
CoM used to be a place where one could find out about upcoming mac news, but now i mostly see articles bashing mac, and step-by-steps leading users through very technical and difficult processes, such as flipping on the power switch…. shame really
yes!… but surely there must be more iPhone 5 rumors that need to be covered/thought up — walkthroughs like were around before Lion had even been released to the public… really guys?
Like many commenters here, getting real sick of CoM constantly bashing Lion (and other things)… this could have been done in a way that just points out the setting/preferences without the bashing. After all, this is “Cult of Mac”… If I want to read the Apple bashing, I’ll go over the Gizmodo.
lion is great period. I was coming from an old mac mini with leopard to a brand new mac mini with lion. trust me the changes in lion are amazing, especially if you get the magic tracpad. I was really skeptical when they showed the lion keynote. i thought the new features were pretty lazy and pointless. but after using lion for almost a month I would never go back.
don’t forget CNet
I don’t mind the lack of scroll bars but I would like to have the coloured icons back in the sidebar of Finder and iTunes.
If you are resistant to change stick with Snow leopard or even better get windows xp, scroll bar are useless
It pleases me to see the comments here, as I too have been growing tired of the Lion bashing coming from CoM. I think it is finally time to unfollow CoM on twitter… too much clutter in the timeline without any useful information.
I agree
For all the comments below, did no one notice that there is no selection for “General” in the System Settings image?
Btw, how i can install System 9 to my iMac 27, because I REALLY hate everything new what Apple brings to us. Just hate new scrolls, new magic mouse, I WANT wires back! Can you help me?
Just kidding. If you don’t like changes you don’t a true Mac fan.
Great. Thanks very much. You have saved me a lot of frustration. Brian
Holy cow thank you so much i was seriously going to downgrade or throw computer out window
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THANK YOU!!!!!
Oh you callow youth… (look it up)
Us older types (fu,2) who helped INVENT the computer appreciate the above column — it’s annoying having to use more movements when fewer were sufficient, and we hate the constant changes in where things are located and how to make things go. It’s like if the car people kept switching which pedals were gas, brake, clutch.Hell, even Amazon has recognized this and offers a Classic Version for those of us who hate the IOS they try to use when we log in on a iPad.
Thanks for that information!
Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work using Safari under OS Lion.