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Terminal Tip: Add scroll arrows to both ends of scroll bar


Have you been paging through a document and wished that the scroll arrows were at both ends of the scroll bar? With a simple Terminal hack, you can have it your way. Just open Terminal.app (Applications > Utilities) and type in the following command:

defaults write "Apple Global Domain" AppleScrollBarVariant DoubleBoth

You will need to restart your Mac to see the changes. If you want to change the scroll bars back to the normal way, just open the Appearance System Preference pane and select "Together" from the "Place scroll arrows section."

For more tips and tricks like this, visit TUAW's Terminal Tips and Mac 101 sections.

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OS Hacks Terminal Tips

Have you been paging through a document and wished that the scroll arrows were at both ends of the scroll bar? With a simple Terminal...
 

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Joe Hall

Does anyone know how to do the reverse? Does any one know how to change the windows options to have both arrows on the top of the scrollbar?

August 27 2008 at 9:56 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Belcarram

Has anyone ever hacked in the option to resize a Mac window from any side a la MS Windows?

August 22 2008 at 1:10 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Maxintech

Excelent tip.
BTW... use Secrets (http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-secrets/)

August 21 2008 at 11:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
joão Coutinho

Excelente tip.

August 20 2008 at 7:13 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Yakov Chodosh

i want a pair of arrows in the middle, too.

August 20 2008 at 5:31 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Craig

You don't need to restart your Mac, you only need to restart the programs that you want affected. That is, unless you have a lot of open apps you want affected immediately. For the Finder, you can just Relaunch it from the Dock with a ctrl-rt click. If someone reading this only has Safari open - no need to restart the whole computer.

August 20 2008 at 4:45 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kevin Gass

uhh you might wanna change the picture

August 20 2008 at 3:39 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Frank Tinsley

Can I make my scroll bars have no arrows? I never use them.

August 20 2008 at 2:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Frank Tinsley's comment
Rego

This didn't work for me.
Does it work in 10.4?

August 20 2008 at 3:23 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rhywun

That's a good question! I never use them either.

August 21 2008 at 11:04 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Paul

I've used this for years and years, so long I'd forgotten about it (and assumed it was part of the standard OS. Then earlier this year, I looked at iPhoto '08, and saw that it didn't handle it properly.

For what it's worth, I don't know of any other app that has an issue with it, and I still use it on all my machines.

Visual bug in iPhoto: http://www.pbones.com/temp/iphoto08.png

August 20 2008 at 2:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rhett

You can also easily do this with TinkerTool or OnyX.

August 20 2008 at 2:17 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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