macosscrollingui
OS X uses the rubber band effect to show users that they’ve scrolled to the end of a window’s content.
In the past (Lion) the terminal command that follows would disable this effect:
defaults write -g NSScrollViewRubberbanding -int 0
I've tried using Onyx and Tinker Tools to disable this and they do not work. The above terminal command doesn't work either.
Can this scrolling behavior be suppressed or eliminated on 10.9 Mavericks?
This is not an answer, but a hint in the right direction.
I have a non-multi touch trackpad and I rubber band scrolling is disabled in Lion for me. So this setting is linked to the multi-touch support.
In "System Preferences > General" There are three options for "Showing scroll bars". From your description, it sounds like you have the default settings of "Automatically based on mouse or trackpad"
You may find "When Scrolling" or "Always" more to your liking. I'm an old school Mac user, so I have it set to always. That setting solves this problem and other scrolling problems.
If scroll bars were meant to be hidden, then Andy Hertzfeld would have written them that way in the first place.
Best Answer
There is no known solution at the moment – Apple seems to have deprecated the
NSScrollViewRubberbandingcommand in 10.9.You may find that it helps to do Settings > Accessibility > Mouse & Trackpad > Trackpad Options > Scrolling > Without Inertia. This won't actually disable the rubber band effect, but in my experience it makes it less annoying.
Source: https://discussions.apple.com/message/23778772#23778772
Supposedly Cocktail may eliminate the bouncing, but reports are mixed.