Ubuntu – How to disable the hiding of scrollbars in version 16.04 and up

Can someone tell me how to disable the new behavior that just started in Ubuntu 15.10, the hiding of the scrollbars.

I can find many references and questions on this, but they are all related to removing the actual overlay scrollbars and replacing them with the normal scrollbars.

I have used those fixes for years. However, they don't resolve this new problem with having the scrollbars disappear unless you hover your mouse over the window.

This problem (after using all the disable overlay scrollbars fixes) is easily reproduced by bringing up Nautilus with a folder that has more items than will fit in one window. I have always used a quick glance at the window to know if I were seeing the full contents of the folder by seeing the presence of a scrollbar. Now I can't tell without constantly wiggling the mouse over the window. Since I often have 10's of windows opened spreaded across three monitors, I spend a lot of time wiggling the mouse to identify if I have the full content in view, or the portion of the content that is in view.

The problem is also easily produced by running Eclipses which I also have multiple windows running with various editors. I have to constantly wiggle the mouse on those windows also to check to see the portion of the text that is being displayed.

The closest question that I found that comes to this problem is How to disable overlay scrollbar hiding behavior. That resolution is one of the ones I have used for years to remove the overlay. This fix was introduced 4 years before this new behavior of bringing back the scrollbar, but hiding it unless the mouse is recently wiggled over the window.

Running these commands I get:

$ export GTK_OVERLAY_SCROLLING=0
$ gdbus call --session --dest org.freedesktop.DBus --object-path /org/freedesktop/DBus --method org.freedesktop.DBus.UpdateActivationEnvironment '{"GTK_OVERLAY_SCROLLING": "0"}'

Output:

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