scroll bar safari disappeared

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Solving the Case of the Mac’s Disappearing Scroll Bars

By J. D. Biersdorfer

• Feb. 2, 2017

Q. I recently switched to a Mac laptop, and the Safari browser confuses me. Sometimes it has scroll bars on the side of the page, and sometimes it doesn’t. Why is this?

A. In an attempt to streamline the user interface, Apple’s Safari browser for the Mac has scroll bars that can disappear from view if you are not actively scrolling through a web page. The company has been tinkering with desktop scrolling behavior for several years , and Safari’s behavior on the Mac is similar to the way it behaves in Apple’s iOS mobile operating system.

Scroll bars that disappear until they are needed make more sense on a mobile device with limited screen space than they do on a bigger screen navigated by mouse or track pad. Fortunately, you can change the scroll bar behavior for your programs in the Mac’s system preferences.

Click the System Preferences icon in the Mac’s desktop dock , or go to the Apple Menu and choose System Preferences. When the System Preferences box opens, click the General icon in the top row.

In the General box , go to the “Show scroll bars” section and click the button next to Always. Additionally, you can change what happens when you click in a scroll bar too, either jumping to the next page or to the area of the page where you clicked. (Before you close the preferences box, you can make other interface adjustments like changing the highlight color and increasing the sidebar icon size, among other things.)

If you do not like Safari, you can download another Mac-friendly browser like Google Chrome , Mozilla Firefox , Opera or Vivaldi . In most newer browsers, you can even use a keyboard shortcut to roll through a page — tap the space bar to scroll down, or hold down the Shift key and tap the space bar to reverse direction.

Personal Tech invites questions about computer-based technology to [email protected] . This column will answer questions of general interest, but letters cannot be answered individually.

• a. Send us an email
• b. Anonymous form
• Buyer's Guide
• Upcoming Products
• Tips / Contact Us
• Podcast Instagram Facebook Twitter Mastodon YouTube Notifications RSS Newsletter

How to Make Scroll Bars Always Visible in macOS

In macOS Ventura, Apple has made hiding scroll bars when not in use a default behavior of the operating system, but you can prevent this from happening if you know where to look. Keep reading to learn how it's done.

Apple has made this the default setting because it is in keeping with the minimalist UI design of macOS, but if you don't see a scroll bar, you may not even know that a window can be scrolled, making navigation more difficult in general.

Fortunately, you can change this behavior pretty easily in macOS and make it so that scroll bars always remain visible. The following steps show you how.

• Click the Apple (  ) symbol in the top-left corner of your Mac's menu bar, then click System Settings... .
• Using the sidebar, scroll down and select Appearance .
• Under the "Show scroll bars" option, click the radio button next to Always .

Your preference will be implemented instantly, and you should now see scroll bars wherever scrolling is available.

Note that if you're using macOS Monterey or earlier, the same setting can be found in the General panel of System Preferences .

Get weekly top MacRumors stories in your inbox.

Popular Stories

Apple Apologizes for 'Crush' iPad Pro Ad, Won't Put It on TV

10 Reasons to Wait for Next Year's iPhone 17

Apple Releases iOS 17.5 With Cross-Platform Tracking Detection, EU App Downloads From Websites and More

OpenAI Announces ChatGPT App for Mac, GPT-4 for Free, and More

Every Model of Apple's M1 iPad Air Drops to Record Low Prices on Amazon

Next article.

Our comprehensive guide highlighting every major new addition in iOS 17, plus how-tos that walk you through using the new features.

App Store changes for the EU, new emoji, Podcasts transcripts, and more.

Get the most out your iPhone 15 with our complete guide to all the new features.

A deep dive into new features in macOS Sonoma, big and small.

Revamped models with OLED displays, M4 chip, and redesigned Magic Keyboard accessory.

Updated 10.9-inch model and new 12.9-inch model, M2 chip.

Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference will kick off with a keynote on June 10.

Expected to see new AI-focused features and more. Preview coming at WWDC in June with public release in September.

Other Stories

5 hours ago by Juli Clover

11 hours ago by Tim Hardwick

5 days ago by Tim Hardwick

6 days ago by Tim Hardwick

Home » Tech Tips » Mac » How to Show or Hide Scroll Bars in Mac?

How to Show or Hide Scroll Bars in Mac?

Sometimes the new user interface design concepts make us sick. On the name of UI design companies remove the handy features used by people for many years. Scroll bars are shown vertically and horizontally if the visible content exceeds the width of the app’s display window. When you read long document or webpage, it helps to know the position where you are and estimate the remaining length of the content. For most of us, it works like looking at the remaining pages when you are reading a book. Long back Apple removed, the fixed scroll bars and shows them when you move the mouse or based on trackpad gestures. In this article let us discuss how to bring the scroll bars in Mac permanently back and few other customizing options for you to make it easy.

Related: How to show desktop in Mac?

Bring Missing Scroll Bars in Mac

If you are not seeing the scroll bar on Safari, Pages or any other app then simply move the mouse or cursor using trackpad. This will make the scroll bar visible. However, this is not convenient as it may disappear before you may catch to drag it to the required position. The solution is simple; you need to make it visible permanently.

Scroll Bar Options in macOS 12 or Earlier

Since the settings are different in macOS 13 (Ventura) or later, first we explain with older macOS versions (12 or earlier).

Click on “Apple menu” and go to “System Preferences…” section.

Click on “General” preferences option.

You will have three options under “Show scroll bars”.

Automatically based on mouse or trackpad

This is a tricky option to understand. It can be better understand with and without an external mouse connected to your Mac. First enable this and open any default app like Preview or Safari or Pages showing a lengthy document. You will NOT see any scrollbar unless you move the cursor up or down using trackpad movement.

Now plugin your mouse using a cable or USB and check the document. You will permanently see the scroll bars. You can move the bars either using mouse or using trackpad, arrow keys or spacebar.

So enabling automatic option will basically show the scroll bars when you have a mouse plugged. And toggle the scroll bar based on trackpad movement when you have no external mouse.

When scrolling

This option does the same function as previous option without external mouse. That means, you will see the scroll bars only when you move the cursor up or down using double finger swipe.

This is a good option, in our opinion, to bring the scroll bar permanently back regardless of you have external mouse or not. Choose this option to work smoothly with your documents.

Related: How to manage desktop in Mac?

Scroll Bar Movement

Simply enabling scroll bar is not sufficient in most cases. Generally you may expect the content to move to the scroll bar position where you have clicked on the sidebar. Unfortunately, Mac will move page by page regardless of where you click the sidebar. You can simply drag and drop the scroll bar to the required position. However, you can also customize the scroll bar click in “General preferences” under “Click in the scroll bar to” section.

• Jump to the next page – this is a default option which will move to next page on the document regardless of where you click on the scroll bar.
• Jump to the spot that’s clicked – probably this is what you will expect to happen when you click on the middle of the scroll bar and you are at the middle immediately.

Using Arrows and Spacebar

Instead of scroll bars, you can also use arrow keys to navigate through the documents. This is especially useful for vertical scrolling.

• Use up or down arrow to move click by click which will move few lines up or down on the document.
• Press spacebar to quickly go to next page.

Scrolling Direction of Scroll Bars in Mac

Another factor when using vertical scroll bar using trackpad is the scrolling direction. For most of us, the scrolling needs to be on the opposite direction of the double finger swiping direction. This means when you swipe double fingers down the content will move up and vice versa. This is called unnatural scrolling.

However, natural scrolling is when you swipe the fingers down the content also will move down and vice versa. This means the content will track the direction of your finger movement.

• Go to “Apple Menu > System Preferences…” and click on “Trackpad” option.
• Click on “Scroll & Zoom” tab.
• Enable or disable “Scroll direction: Natural” option to setup the scrolling direction.

Scroll Bars Option in macOS 13 (Ventura or Later)

If you are using macOS Ventura, Sonoma or later versions then the interface may look bit different with similar set of options.

• Click the Apple logo and go to “System Settings…” menu.

• Go to “Appearance” section and then scroll down to the bottom on the settings page.
• Select your preference under “Show scroll bars” section.

Similarly, you can setup the scrolling direction from “Trackpad” settings page.

Scroll Bars in Mac Third Party Apps

All the scroll bar settings, except the direction, apply only to the default Apple apps like Pages, Safari , Finder, Preview, etc. This will NOT work for the third party apps like Google Chrome.

• Scroll bars are always visible on most of third party apps regardless of your settings in general preferences.
• You can move the scroll bar and the content to the clicked position though you have set “Jump to the next page” in preferences.

In our opinion, these are the ideal settings for apps in order to have easy navigation.

About Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WebNots are team of experts who love to build websites, find tech hacks and share the learning with community.

You also might be interested in

How to Add and Customize Categories Widget in WordPress?

WordPress installation by default comes with few widgets. In addition,[...]

How to Fix Apps Going Out of Screen Issue in Mac?

Ever get frustrated the app you open do not show[...]

How to Fix App Crashing Issues in iPhone?

There are millions of free and premium apps available in[...]

Leave your reply.

I found that with OS 16.0.1 that that menu was in the Appearance menu and not the General. Thanks for the information. I think it is going to work. //… Joe

Thank you so much for this article. It’s very helpful! I’m new to MacBook and I’m impressed with the trackpad gestures that I missed out and it’s so important for navigation. You should’ve included a link to Apple’s article about its multi-touch gestures! ?

DOWNLOAD EBOOKS

• SEO Guide for Beginners
• WordPress SEO PDF Guide
• Weebly SEO PDF Guide
• Alt Code Emoji Shortcuts PDF
• Free ALT Code Shortcuts PDF
• View All eBooks

TRENDING TECH ARTICLES

• 600+ Windows Alt Codes for Symbols
• Fix Chrome Resolving Host Problem
• Fix Slow Page Loading Issue in Google Chrome
• View Webpage Source CSS and HTML in Google Chrome
• Fix Safari Slow Loading Pages in macOS
• Fix Windows WiFi Connection Issue
• ROYGBIV or VIBGYOR Rainbow Color Codes
• Fix I’m Not A Robot reCAPTCHA Issue in Google Search
• Structure of HTTP Request and Response

POPULAR WEB TUTORIALS

• Move WordPress Localhost Site to Live Server
• Move Live WordPress Site to Localhost
• Move WordPress Media Folder to Subdomain
• Fix WooCommerce Ajax Loading Issue
• Create a Free Weebly Blog
• Edit Weebly Source Code HTML and CSS
• Add Scroll To Top Button in Weebly
• Add Table in Weebly Site
• How to Add Advanced Data Table Widget in Weebly?
• Up to $500 Free Google Ads Coupon Codes

FREE SEO TOOLS

• Webpage Source Code Viewer
• HTTP Header Checker
• What is My IP Address?
• Google Cache Checker
• Domain Age Checker Tool
• View All Free Web and SEO Tools

© 2024 · WebNots · All Rights Reserved.

Type and press Enter to search

How to Show Missing Scroll Bar on Mac

Updated on Friday, May 10, 2024

Approved by

It is always necessary to  scroll on your Mac  when the content doesn't fit the size of the current window such as browsing the web pages on Safari, Chrome, Firefox, etc., reading a PDF or document, editing a file, and so forth, to scroll up and down the page. However, some Mac users encounter the problem that the scroll bar is missing on Mac . 

The fact is that you may haven't chosen to always show the scroll bar on your Mac. Therefore, the system automatically hides and shows the scroll bar on the Mac screen based on your settings in System Preferences. This post tells how to make Mac always show the scroll bar . Keep reading to configure your Mac scroll bar.

How to show the scroll bar on Mac

With the scroll bar shown on the side of the page, you can quickly scroll up and down the page by dragging the scroll bar up and down. When you can't see the scroll bar on your Mac screen when you surf in Safari, edit an excel sheet, etc., you may get annoyed. 

In this case, sliding the mouse or scrolling on the Trackpad may activate the hidden scroll bar to appear on the screen. Or, you can move the cursor to the side of the page and hover there, the scroll bar may also show up. If you prefer to make the scroll bar always show on Mac, here's how to change the settings of the scroll bar on Mac.

• Click on the Apple logo ( Apple Menu ) in the upper left corner. 
• Choose System Preferences on the pop-up menu.

• Find the Show scroll bar feature on the new window. 

Once you have set the scroll bar to be always shown on Mac, it will automatically appear when the content can't be fully displayed with the window's current size. Then you can always utilize the scroll bar to view the content on the screen. 

Besides, you can further set up the scroll bar on your Mac to meet your personal preferences. Under the Show scroll bar sector, there is a feature called Click in the scroll bar to , including two options: 

• Jump to the next page: It enables you to Click on the scroll bar to move the content page by page.
• Jump to the spot that's clicked: It moves to the spot where you're clicking.

You can also press and hold the Option key while clicking the scroll bar to momentarily switch the scrolling method.

How to adjust the scrolling speed on Mac

Whether you use the Trackpad or the mouse on your Mac, you can easily control the scrolling speed of your Trackpad or mouse by changing the settings in Accessibility. Let's dive into the details.

• Navigate to the Apple Menu, and choose System Preferences.

• Scroll down on the left sidebar to find the Pointer Control feature. 
• On the right column, choose the Trackpad options or the Mouse options to open the window.

• Click the OK button to confirm the changes.

It is easy to personalize the appearance of the scroll bar on your Mac. If you find the scroll bar is missing, you can change the system preferences of the scroll bar to always show it on the side of the pages. In addition, you can control the scrolling speed of the Trackpad or mouse to meet your needs.

Share this post to help others configure their scroll bar on Macs!

Amanda is one of the main columnists at iBoysoft. She loves exploring new technologies, focusing on macOS, Windows OS, data recovery, data security, disk management, and other tech-related issues. She takes delight in providing technical and informative articles to help people out of problems and get the utmost out of their devices.

Jessica Shee is a senior tech editor at iBoysoft. Throughout her 4 years of experience, Jessica has written many informative and instructional articles in data recovery, data security, and disk management to help a lot of readers secure their important documents and take the best advantage of their devices.

No. 308, 3/F, Unit 1, Building 6, No. 1700, Tianfu Avenue North, High-tech Zone

Copyright© 2024 iBoysoft ® . All Rights Reserved.

Enable Persistent Scroll Bars on the Mac [macOS Tutorial]

Here's how you can enable persistent scroll bars that don't automatically disappear on the Mac in apps like Safari, Notes and more.

See Scroll Bars All the Time on Your Mac and See Exactly Where You are on Any Page

In order to put more focus on the content and less on the UI, Apple simply fades the scroll bars away in macOS whenever you're done scrolling. They show up whenever you are scrolling so you know exactly where you are on the page, obviously.

Related Story How To Watch Apple’s ‘Let Loose’ Event Live On Any Device, Including iPhone, Mac, Android, Windows, More

But, if you want to see the scroll bars all the time and want to instantly scroll by clicking on the scroll bars directly instead of using your mouse or trackpad, then you be pleased to learn that the option to make that happen is actually available to you. It's simply hidden inside System Preferences, and it takes a couple of clicks to enable it. Read more for details.

Step 1. Launch System Preferences . You can do so by clicking on the icon in the Dock, via Spotlight search or by simply clicking on the Apple logo in the Mac menu bar.

Step 2. Now click on General .

Step 3. Now find the option called 'Show scroll bars' and select 'Always.' That's all.

From now on, whenever you scroll on your Mac, whether it's Safari, Notes or just a PDF, the scroll bars will always be there on the right for you to play around with. If you don't want to use the mouse or trackpad to scroll, you can click and drag on the scroll bars to move around in any page.

If you love nothing more than a clean look, then you have the option to fully revert the changes you made. Simply select 'Automatically based on mouse or trackpad' from General in System Preferences .

For more helpful guides and tutorials, head over to  this section .

Deal of the Day

Further Reading

How To Activate Stolen Device Protection On iPhone Running iOS 17 And Newer Versions

Apple Expected To Launch An Entirely New iPad With mini-LED Display Later This Year, As Both iPad Air Models To Come With LCD

How To Disable Or Enable Predictive Text On iPhone Running iOS 17

How To Edit DMs On Instagram

Trending stories, amd rdna 5 to be a completely new gpu architecture from the ground up, rdna 4 mostly fixes rdna 3 issues & improves ray tracing, apple vision pro 2 rumored to start from $1,500, with samsung and chinese display supplier seeya possibly entering the supply chain to lower costs, native zelda: majora’s mask pc port with steam deck support, gyro aiming, high framerates and more released, aging mice treated with a glp-1 agonist that is commonly used in weight loss drugs start exhibiting “age-counteracting effects”, galaxy s25 ultra prototype’s specifications rumor claims that the 2025 flagship will get a bump in the ram column, but maximum storage remains unchanged, popular discussions, cpu market witnesses 33% growth in q1 2024, intel & amd down on both client & server side but market stabilizing, nvidia to unveil geforce rtx 5090 & rtx 5080 at the same time, availability a few weeks apart, tsmc’s entire cowos supply reportedly reserved by nvidia & amd until 2025, nvidia’s aib partner, manli, rejects rma request for “melted” geforce rtx 4090 gpu, says its “user error”, amd zen 5 cpus rumored to feature around 10% ipc increase, slightly more in cinebench r23 single-thread test.

Contribute to the Microsoft Edge forum! Click  here  to learn more  💡

April 9, 2024

Contribute to the Microsoft Edge forum!

Click  here  to learn more  💡

• Search the community and support articles
• All other issues
• Microsoft Edge
• Search Community member

Ask a new question

How do I stop the scroll bar disappearing after 3 seconds In Windows 10 using Edge

It's annoying that there isn't a proper answer to this problem :-(

Report abuse

Reported content has been submitted​

Replies (10) 

• Independent Advisor

2 people found this reply helpful

Was this reply helpful? Yes No

Sorry this didn't help.

Great! Thanks for your feedback.

How satisfied are you with this reply?

Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site.

Thanks for your feedback.

Hi OleLyderik, I am Dave, I will help you with this. Open the Settings App, then go to Ease of Access - Display. Find the 'Automatically hide scroll bars in Windows' option and turn that off Restart (not shut down) your PC to apply that setting.

It is not scrollbars in windows but in edge browser. It doesn't seem possible to fix the problem, so I have to use Firefox. But thanks for the effort

Yours sincerely

Hi OleLyderik, There is no separate setting in the Edge browser, it gets that instruction from Windows to show the scrollbars or to hide them.

No unfortunately, see screenshot below

1 person found this reply helpful

Hi Ole, After changing that setting, restart (not shut down) your PC and check if that setting has been applied to Edge.

Sorry but it has nothing to do with that feature in windows, it's an edge problem.

with best regards

Hi Ole, There is a beta function in Edge. Open Edge, then paste this into the address bar and press Enter. edge://flags. In there, search for #edge-overlay-scrollbars-win-style Try setting that to enabled, then restart Edge and check if that stops the scrollbars hiding.

Tried it, no effect, but ok I use Firefox as default browser, it works fine.

There is no answer to the problem, it's a bug in Edge, maybe Microsoft should fix that problem and it has nothing to do with edge://flags.

Question Info

• Norsk Bokmål
• Ελληνικά
• Русский
• עברית
• العربية
• ไทย
• 한국어
• 中文(简体)
• 中文(繁體)
• 日本語

Adobe Community

• Global community
• 日本語コミュニティ Dedicated community for Japanese speakers
• 한국 커뮤니티 Dedicated community for Korean speakers
• Discussions
• Betreff: Adobe PDF / Scroll bars still missing

Adobe PDF / Scroll bars still missing

Copy link to clipboard

3 Correct answers

never-displayed

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Safari search bar has disappeared

The search bar on my Safari Browser has disappeared. Apple support helped me to switch to Tab Layout from Separate to compact. This works, but really prefer the Separate view. I did some research and went to customize the view and the search bar is dimmed out. When I switch to compact view it is not. I really need some help. I am at a loss.

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 12.2

Posted on Feb 28, 2022 6:03 PM

Posted on Mar 1, 2022 12:17 PM

Hello DRR84,

We see you have a question regarding Safari's search box, and we'd be happy to help out.

This page here helps to provide some assistance for getting Safari customized as desired:

Customize the Safari browser window on Mac

You may try using this to help drag the default set (which includes the address/search bar), back to the toolbar, if you're having issues with dragging just 'Address, Search, and Tabs'.

Regarding tabs, this page can help to go over the available options for adjusting that, if needed: Change Tabs preferences in Safari on Mac

Similar questions

• Finder bar Missing fix asap P;easer asap help me get my finder bar back? When I click on top it shows up then when closing out Safari there is no fider bar? 2361 2
• no menu bar on Safari how do I recover the menu bar in Safari? For no apparent reason, the menu bar simply disappeared. Can't see to recover it! How can I retrieve it? 740 1
• Is it possible to move the "Reload this page" button in Safari for macOS? I like to group all of my oft-used functions (i.e. buttons) into one place in the Safari toolbar. When I right-click and go to Customize Toolbar, I see all of the buttons I can add/remove and move around, such as: Home, Back (previous)<--, ...Next -->, and New Tab (+), etc. I can also see where Safari has the "Reload this page" button, seemingly hard coded to appear on the far-right of the URL/Search bar. Is it really not possible for me to move this bottom out of its far-right "home" and put it wherever I want? If this is the case, then I honestly do not understand the design concept of Apple at all anymore. I can add/remove/relocate a button that shows/hides the bookmarks toolbar... and I can add/remove/relocate a "Privacy Report, Web inspector" and several other almost-never-used buttons... but the "Reload this page" button is frozen in place? I am aware that I can go to Safari > Settings > Tabs... and select "Compact." And that for SOME absolutely unknown reason to me... this allows me to move the Reload button. BUT... then I have to live with the tabs being in this weird "Chrome'esque" tabs situation, where the URL bar moves around when I am physically on THAT tab. This browsing paradigm does my head in. I want the URL bar to stay put!!!, and I want the tab that I am currently using to be "highlighted" by having it visually look "active" somehow... and all the other tabs I have open to appear "inactive" in some visual way... i.e. darker... muted... grayed out... I don't care. But... making the "Active Tab" appear "active" by making it appear as the defect URL bar...??? This is... CLEARLY some UX/UI designers attempt and being "different from the other guys" just for the sake of being different. 240 4

Loading page content

Page content loaded

Mar 1, 2022 12:17 PM in response to DRR84

Mar 3, 2022 6:20 PM in response to Eric_G1

Thank you for your help. I was able to do it through customize toolbar. Strange, but the option was dimmed out.