Pull Down To Refresh On Your Mac [OS X Tips]

After a long week of tips on how to make your Mac look more like iOS, how about a tip on how to make it ACT more like iOS?

On the iPhone, it’s become de rigueur to use a tap and pull to refresh motion. I first noticed it with the Twitter apps, and now more and more apps are using this style of refresh. I wish I was able to do it on my Mac. Oh, wait, I can – at least in my browser. Here’s how.

This requires a browser extension, and there is one for both Safari and Chrome. The Safari extension, however, requires you be an Apple Safari Dev, with a valid certificate saying so, so I’m gonna skip making it work for Safari. That leaves us with Chrome.

First up, head over to github, a site that many devs and such use for code file management, storage and sharing. Download the Pull-to-refresh-for-Chrome-and-Safari .zip file (for simplicity – the .tar.gz will work as well) and unzip on your Desktop.

Next, go into the just-unzipped folder and open the folder named ‘chrome.’ Double click on the pull_to_refresh.crx file, which should bring up your Chrome browser, and give you a little warning at the bottom.

Click on Continue, and it will install in Chrome. Then, using your trackpad, or (I’m assuming – someone check) Apple mouse, you will be able to scroll up past the top of a page, and the browser window will refresh. Limited, but kind of cool, right?

Some reports say this only works in Lion. If anyone tries it in Snow Leopard, or, heck, even Leopard, let us know if it works in the comments below.

Source: OS X Daily

Rob LeFebvre

Rob LeFebvre is an Anchorage, Alaska-based writer and editor who has contributed to various tech, gaming and iOS sites, including 148Apps, Creative Screenwriting, Shelf-Awareness, VentureBeat, and Paste Magazine. Feel free to find Rob on Twitter @roblef, and send him a cookie once in a while; he’ll really appreciate it.