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Comment by Reason077 | Hacker News Reader

System Preferences > General > Show Scroll Bars > Always

It's right there, people!

I'm puzzled by this, too. But I think Willison (the linked tweeter) is complaining about a web-specific manifestation of this, when a web page has a sub-section that needs to scroll independently of the larger page that it's contained within. (The list of messages in Gmail is a good example of when this is useful.) Having said that, though, I'm not actually sure under what conditions his lack of scrollbar is occurring. Personally, I've noticed this can be more of an issue on iOS devices, where sometimes the contents of a <div> are meant to be scrolled, but it's almost entirely nondiscoverable due to iOS's lack of scrollbars.

That doesn't work in the browser, which is what the tweet linked by this story is discussing.

In which browser? I have scrollbars in Safari, Firefox, and Chrome from either that setting or an in-browser setting.

I'm reading in Safari with that setting on 'always' and I see the scrollbar handle right there next to your comment.

Then tell that to the user in the linked tweet. I'm sure they would be happy to know you've solved their problem.

That works to show it in safari/chrome/firefox for me... did they disable this in recent versions of the OS?

And the philosophy of having them off “by default “? That is the issue here.

They coincided with using trackpads by default on the desktop.

The scrollbar appears if you use a scroll gesture.

It’s obvious with web pages, and with most content when you can scroll, and removal of visual noise and increasing the content area is good.

I personally use a mouse, and so I have them turned on, but generally I like Apple removing unnecessary clutter.

It’s really no big deal at all.

Scrollbars aren't visual noise, they are an indicator that tells you a) that there's more stuff than fits on the screen, b) where you are spatially, in relation to all that stuff, and c) how much more stuff there is, relative to what's shown on your screen. Hiding them leads to users often not figuring out that there's more stuff, and scrolling will get them there.

FWIW, pages are supposed to flash their scrollbars on load to indicate these.

Is that on load, or when the user finally switches to the tab they opened few minutes before by middle-clicking the link?

When they switch to the tab.

It’s when the control displaying the content first appears on the actual display.

Honestly, I've never seen that behavior in the wild. Is it Apple-specific?

It exists on Apple platforms.

If nobody else is doing it, then perhaps it is Apple specific.

> Scrollbars aren't visual noise, they are an indicator that tells you a) that there's more stuff than fits on the screen, b) where you are spatially, in relation to all that stuff, and c) how much more stuff there is, relative to what's shown on your screen.

They are visual noise if that information isn’t relevant to you.

If you’re proofreading a long book, they are likely to be more useful than just browsing the web.

> Hiding them leads to users often not figuring out that there's more stuff

Does it?

> and scrolling will get them there.

Really? With most content it’s fairly clear from the content itself.

IIRC, the default setting for "Show scrollbars" is "Automatic based on mouse or trackpad": if you have a mouse connected, they're always visible, while if you have a trackpad, they only show up when you're scrolling. (There is no "never visible" setting.)

Your half right : if you have a mouse connected they only show up when you're scrolling

Is there any way to do that on ios?

I first turned on my ipad, then sat for several minutes staring at a box on the screen that clearly wanted input but had no continue button. Only slowly did it dawn on me that there was a hidden scroll region that would enable it.

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