Filed under: Tips and tricks
TUAW Tip: Four Fun Scroll Wheel tips
Sure you can use your scroll wheel mouse (or track pad) to scroll up and down your OS X windows but why limit yourself? Here's a quick list of TUAW's favorite scroll wheel tricks:
1. Zoom your screen. Hold down the Control key while scrolling up on your mouse (or performing a dual-finger up drag on your trackpad). Your entire screen zooms in. Control-scroll (or drag) down to zoom out.
2. Scroll through your Apps Press and hold the Command key then press and release Tab to display your active Applications. Scroll through your applications left (scrolling up) and right (scrolling down). When an Application is selected, you can move your hand from the scroll button on your mouse to the keyboard to press "H" to hide the application or "Q" to quit it. Release the Command key to switch to the selected application.
3. Scroll horizontally. In applications with both vertical and horizontal sliders such as, say, Preview, press Shift while scrolling to scroll horizontally instead of vertically.
4. Open pages in new tabs in Safari. Instead of right-clicking a link and selecting "Open in New Tab", just scroll-button-click a link instead. If you have enabled tabbed viewing in Safari (Preferences -> Tabs -> Enable Tabbed Browsing), your link opens in a new tab.
Thanks, Fritz Laurel.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
john russell said 8:25PM on 5-08-2007
I have the scroll button on my Logitech mouse set to all windows in Exposé. Works like a charm. It's so much of a habit that I often accidently go into the dragging scroll feature on Windows computers.
Reply
(01) said 8:57PM on 5-08-2007
Oh man, the scroll through your apps tip is nice, hadn't seen that one before. A nice trick on MBP is to just rest your one finger on the trackpad and then you can "one finger" scroll with another finger without lifting your hand off the pad.
Reply
Query said 9:21PM on 5-08-2007
#2 and #3 can be simplified with the Mighy Mouse's scroll ball, and #4 depends on your mouse configuration. I believe that that may be the action if it's activated as mouse button #3.
Reply
sageimac said 10:00PM on 5-08-2007
Am I missing something? I still have 10.3.9, and the only one that
works for me is #3 scrolling horizontally. Are there other settings
that have to be activated to get the rest to work?
Reply
tim said 10:46PM on 5-08-2007
SWEET! For the record... the opening in a new tab feature worked for me in FF and Camino as well. This is GREAT for me! Thanks!
Reply
Matt said 10:55PM on 5-08-2007
Zooming the screen with the scroll wheel is pretty neat...unless your crappy Mighty Mouse scroll sphere is broken, and doesn't scroll down anymore...I had to reboot my machine to fix it!!
Reply
Nick said 10:58PM on 5-08-2007
For the record, you can command-left click to open a new tab via a link as well.
Reply
Wojtek said 4:31AM on 5-09-2007
#3: in fact: it can be simplified with any mouse that supports up/down AND left/right scrolling. Like Microsoft's Intellimouse Explorer for Bluetooth (which still lacks Tiger enhancement software, BTW).
Reply
gediminas.paulauskas said 5:41AM on 5-09-2007
#2 should read Press Command, press and release Tab to show application list, scroll through applications, and when an application is selected, press H (with the forefinger of left hand, the one which holds Command with the thumb) to hide...
Reply
Rich said 11:31AM on 5-09-2007
Has anyone tried crtl+command and scroll button in a Camino browser window ? It zooms the text size up and down within the frames / tables. I can't make Safari do it.
Reply
Kim said 12:12PM on 5-09-2007
Matt, just command-minus to zoom out (and command-plus to zoom in)... no need to reboot.
Reply
King Fysel said 12:42PM on 5-09-2007
#1: Once you zoom in with the scroll button you can scroll around the screen by moving the mouse in any direction. Neat. Does it remind anyone else of QuickTime VR?
Reply
Fritz Laurel said 3:31PM on 5-09-2007
;)
Reply
Sean Flanagan said 7:53PM on 5-09-2007
Also in Camino browsers, holding down option and scrolling up and down goes through your History. Option-Scroll Up works like the Forward button, Option-Scroll Down works like the back button. It's very convenient for finding a page that you went to earlier in a day, especially on a fast connection.
Reply