The Reversed Mouse Wheel
Several years ago, Apple fundamentally changed how scrolling works in macOS to align the desktop experience with the touchscreen experience on iPhones and iPads. This new default behavior is called “Natural Scrolling.” With Natural Scrolling, when you push your fingers up on the trackpad or roll your mouse wheel up, the page content moves up (meaning you scroll down towards the bottom of the document).
While this makes perfect physical sense on a touchscreen where your finger is directly manipulating the digital paper, it feels completely backward to millions of users who grew up using a traditional PC mouse wheel, where rolling the wheel down pulls the scrollbar down. If you frequently switch between a Windows PC and a Mac, or if you simply prefer the legacy scroll direction, you can easily turn Natural Scrolling off.
How to Revert to Standard Scrolling
You can change the scroll direction independently for your trackpad and your mouse.
- Click the Apple Logo in the top-left corner of your screen and select System Settings… (or System Preferences on older macOS versions).
- Scroll down the left-hand sidebar and click on Mouse (or Trackpad, depending on what you are using).
- If you clicked Trackpad: Look for the Scroll & Zoom tab at the top. Find the toggle for “Natural scrolling” and turn it Off.
- If you clicked Mouse: Look for the toggle switch labelled “Natural scrolling” (or a checkbox on older versions) and turn it Off.
Your scrolling behavior will immediately revert to the traditional, standard direction. Rolling your mouse wheel downwards will now pull the page downwards, exactly as it works on Windows.