[OS X TeX] Skim and other apps: disabling rubber band effect with Magic Mouse

[Richard Seguin]

I really like the momentum scrolling using the Magic Mouse, but I’ve been annoyed by that “rubber band” or “elastic bounce” effect. The slightest twitch of a finger over the mouse could cause a document to twitch vertically and horizontally, exposing a fake background behind the document. I could live with the vertical twitch, but the horizontal twitch really annoys me. I discovered that disabling horizontal scrolling* still does not prevent the horizontal twitch. So, I found this hint last night:

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20120509063823940

To disable the rubber band effect in some applications, run this in the terminal:

defaults write -g NSScrollViewRubberbanding -int 0

You have to quite and app and bring it back up to see a change.

To reverse this, run  

defaults delete -g NSScrollViewRubberbanding

I’m running Yosemite. A quick check of some apps shows that this stops the rubber band effect in Skim and Pages, but not not in TeXShop, Safari, or Preview.

More discussion here from the Lion era:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/15791693#15791693

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/18187/can-you-disable-rubber-band-scrolling-in-os-x-lion

On page 9 of the Apple discussion thread, someone provides a link to a Safari extension that they wrote that supposedly stops the rubber band effect in Safari:

https://github.com/lloeki/unelastic/releases

I haven’t tried it and don’t have any idea if it still works with Yosemite. If anyone happens to try it, let us know if it works!

Richard Séguin

*Disable horizontal scrolling:

defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.mouse MouseHorizontalScroll -bool NO

Re-enable horizontal scrolling: 

defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.mouse MouseHorizontalScroll -bool YES