Macos – enable scrolling with middle-button-drag in OS X

macosscrolling

I have a mouse with three buttons but no wheel.

In OS X, is there any way (perhaps with addon software) that would allow me to use my third button for scrolling by holding it and moving the mouse?

Best Answer

Smart Scroll does what you are looking for, with its 'Grab Scroll' feature. Assign it to 'Button 3 (Middle)' and dragging on both axes will work in apps such as browsers (Chrome), Terminal, Adobe Photoshop, and Finder - no app I've tried hasn't worked with it (using the 4.0 betas up and up). It has a free trial.

Screenshot of Smart Scroll

Related Solutions

Windows – How to disable the middle button scrolling in Chrome

Update 27 Jul 2020: It appears that the following extension is no longer in the Chrome Store. I still have it installed and it was not removed. I'm looking into whether I can find out more info...

For those interested, the entirety of the source for the extension is as follows. This may also work as a Tampermonkey user script.
var target;

window.addEventListener('mousedown', function(mouseEvent) {
  if(mouseEvent.button != 1)
      return;
  target = mouseEvent.target;

  mouseEvent.preventDefault();
  mouseEvent.stopPropagation();
}, true);

There's an extension named (incorrectly) "No Smooth Scrolling" which disables this:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/no-smooth-scrolling/oikddacoldignalphkgeppnpalkmkgbo

OSX Lion: Can I use “classic” mousewheel scrolling but keep “natural” trackpad scrolling

Found a duplicate question on Ask Different.

There is no offically supported method to do this, but there is a free program called Scroll Reverser which allows you to reverse vertical or horizontal scrolling on the devices of your choice. It's working great for me.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Windows – How to disable the middle button scrolling in Chrome

OSX Lion: Can I use “classic” mousewheel scrolling but keep “natural” trackpad scrolling

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