Filed under: Hardware, OS, Tips and tricks
Who needs a Mighty Mouse? Hold shift for horizontal scrolling
John Gruber linked the blog of Mike Rohde, a visual designer who discovered a slick scrolling trick built into Mac OS X: with a standard scrolling mouse, you can hold the shift key in most apps to scroll horizontally. Mike cites his day job apps like Photoshop and Illustrator, but this seems to work in NetNewsWire, Firefox and iTunes as well. I'm not sure if this is a 10.4 Tiger-only thing (anyone care to share?), but it's a handy little trick for those who aren't exactly enamored with the Mighty Mouse.
Get a WordPress.com Blog
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
andy said 12:08PM on 9-22-2006
wow, everytime i think i know osx, little nuggets like this appear on the net, gotta love it, this and command clicking spotlight results are the two most useful of late
Reply
NotAwesome said 12:09PM on 9-22-2006
Still languishing in Panther (10.3.9) over here and this trick works.
Cool! This is mucho handy, thanks!
Reply
GaryN said 12:10PM on 9-22-2006
Hi,
It works in Panther (10.3.9), at least in Safari 1.3.2
Bye!
Reply
aazp said 12:19PM on 9-22-2006
So people didn't know?
OS X is an amazing tool, learn about it to take full advantage of it.
Next tip: Double click to open files and folders. And a lot of people will be surprised.
Reply
Shreedhan said 12:32PM on 9-22-2006
How do I open folders/files via keyboard? When I hit return it renames it.
Reply
Lucas Couvreur said 12:40PM on 9-22-2006
Hey ??!
Didn't i allready knew that one ??
Reply
Bede said 12:41PM on 9-22-2006
Shreedan: just hold cmd and press down!
Reply
Daniel D said 3:04PM on 9-22-2006
Whoa easy on the sarcasm fellas some people out there might not have actually known this and it would have been useful to them just like the day you found this out. Im sure this wont be the last tip you read that you will already know either.
Reply
bennymoto said 12:45PM on 9-22-2006
#5: Apple O (as in oh!) will satisfy your keyboard shortcut needs.
Reply
Bill said 12:46PM on 9-22-2006
Actually, you can get both horizontal and vertical scrolling with this trick (at least I can on my first gen 1 Ghz 17" PowerBook in Tiger). Here's the trick: Hold down the shift key and the mouse button. Now drag the cursor past the left or right side of the window for horizontal scrolling or past the top or bottom of the window for vertical scrolling. Drag out of any corner and you'll get both vertical and horizontal scrolling (i.e., diagonal) at the same time. The amount of space past the window you drag determines the scrolling speed.
Of course, one can also page down a window by tapping the space bar and page up a window by shift-spacing...
Reply
Nik Fletcher said 12:48PM on 9-22-2006
This tip still doesn't excuse the iTunes Store having a horizontal scroll bar on my iBook.....
Reply
Daveed V. said 12:49PM on 9-22-2006
Unlike aazp, I don't think this is a quasi-universally-known MacOS X feature, but I am surprised that John Gruber mentions it that way (suggesting that he, a long-time Mac user and generally a rather knowledgeable one, just learned about it). Certainly among serious Photoshop and Excel users this is a fairly-well-known feature. Also, back when the Mighty Mouse was introduced, lots of forum contributors everywhere pooh-poohed the scroll ball as overkill because of this feature (not that I agree).
Shreedhan: I think you're looking for Cmd-O, but if you like the keyboard, check out Quicksilver.
Reply
mmli said 12:54PM on 9-22-2006
on windows in Illustrator:
scroll-wheel = scroll vertically
shift + scroll-wheel = scroll vertically, a half page each step
ctrl + scroll-wheel = scroll horizontally
ctrl + shift + scroll-wheel = scroll horizontally, a half page each step
altgr or alt + scroll-wheel = zoom
what do other apps offer?
Reply
John Cleary said 1:05PM on 9-22-2006
I too was surprised to hear Gruber didn't know this - or at least that it's been presented this way. It's been there for ages - 10.2 i think. I've been using it for ages. it works in anything that the scroll wheel works in. Perhaps Gruber did know and thought it was worth reminding people, which I definitely agree with.
By the way, to the user wanting to open something from the KB, it's easier to use Apple+Down Arrow than Apple + O, particularly if using the arrow keys already to navigate in the folder. :)
john
Reply
Uncle Jerry said 1:18PM on 9-22-2006
Sometimes when my other hand is "busy" and I need to scroll horizontally across the page to view the rest of the picture, I just press the click wheel on the mouse and that allows me to horizontal scroll and then press it again to go back to normal scrolling...
Reply
greatslack said 1:32PM on 9-22-2006
This trick also works in the Windows version of iTunes, but not in any other Windows apps I've tried
Reply
tim said 2:01PM on 9-22-2006
i loved this feature, that i came accross accidentally because i am pretty sure it has been a Pro Tools feature for a while and I tried it in another program. I have since bought a wireless mighty mouse, and the feature doesnt work with it haha. all good though cause i have the ball lol.
Reply
Roberto Felgueiras said 2:00PM on 9-22-2006
This works with my Wacom Intuos 3 Tablet as well (it has a touch sensitive scrolling strip)
Reply
John P. said 2:53PM on 9-22-2006
This trick is pretty useful, but I too am surprised this is even being mentioned, as I'm sure many many people (like myself) have used this since 10.3.
Maybve a blog dedicated to useful keystrokes?
However, Illustrator CS2 and Photoshop CS2 remap how this feature works - I think side scrolling is option+scroll or some such matter. Holding shift makes it jump further than a normal click.
Reply
Aaron Priven said 4:36PM on 9-22-2006
Well, I admit it -- I didn't know this. And I think of myself as reasonably knowledgeable... where is it documented?
Reply