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Turn off natural scrolling on Macs

Turn off natural scrolling on MacsSolved

Participant

1 month ago

Hey there! I’m an IT admin managing a bunch of Macs using Hexnode. We’ve decided to turn off the Natural scrolling option on all our Macs, I carried it out using some terminal commands. The command worked fine on one machine, but when I tried to roll it out to the rest of our fleet using Hexnode’s Execute Custom Script feature, nada. Natural scrolling is still doing its thing. Here’s the script I used:

#!bin\bash
defaults write NSGlobalDomain com.apple.swipescrolldirection -bool false

1 2	#!bin\bash defaults write NSGlobalDomain com.apple.swipescrolldirection -bool false

I’m probably missing something super obvious, but I’ve thought it through and still can’t figure it out. Any ideas? Would really appreciate a hand here!

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ben_clarke

Hexnode Expert

1 month ago

Marked SolutionPending Review

Hey @ryker!

No worries, we’ve got you covered. The script you’re using runs at the system (root) level, but to turn off Natural scrolling, it needs to run at the user level. That’s why it’s not working as expected. Try this updated script instead:

#!/bin/bash 
loggedInUser=$(stat -f%Su /dev/console) 
loggedInUID=$(id -u $loggedInUser) 
/bin/launchctl asuser $loggedInUID sudo -iu $loggedInUser defaults write NSGlobalDomain com.apple.swipescrolldirection -bool false

#!/bin/bash

loggedInUser=$(stat -f%Su /dev/console)

loggedInUID=$(id -u $loggedInUser)

/bin/launchctl asuser $loggedInUID sudo -iu $loggedInUser defaults write NSGlobalDomain com.apple.swipescrolldirection -bool false

Run this through the Execute Custom Script action, and it’ll do exactly what you’re expecting!

Got any more questions? Hit us up anytime!

Cheers,
Ben Clarke
Hexnode UEM

Marked SolutionPending Review

chrisnock

Participant

3 days ago

Marked SolutionPending Review

this is great. natural scrol is worse with the mouse. How to turn this off for all users not just current user? I also have a question .. if the user is not logged in to the mac, will this still work or za it’ll skip that machine .. can it identify the user account to run in script as you identify the logged in user? thank you

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ben_clarke

Hexnode Expert

3 days ago

Marked SolutionPending Review

Hey @chrisnock ! Great question, my friend! 🙌🏽

Yep, you can turn off natural scrolling for all user accounts on your Mac, even if they’re not logged in. Here’s a script that will handle this for you:

#!/bin/bash
# Modify existing users
for userHome in /Users/*; do
    if [[ -d "$userHome" ]]; then
        sudo -u $(basename "$userHome") defaults write "$userHome/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences" com.apple.swipescrolldirection -bool false
    fi
done
# Modify User Template for future users
sudo defaults write /System/Library/User\ Template/Non_localized/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences com.apple.swipescrolldirection -bool false

#!/bin/bash

# Modify existing users

for userHome in /Users/*; do

if [[ -d "$userHome" ]]; then

sudo -u $(basename "$userHome") defaults write "$userHome/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences" com.apple.swipescrolldirection -bool false

done

# Modify User Template for future users

sudo defaults write /System/Library/User\ Template/Non_localized/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences com.apple.swipescrolldirection -bool false

This script not only changes the setting for current user accounts but also ensures that any new accounts created in the future will have Natural scrolling turned off.

Let me know if you have any more questions!

Best regards
Ben Clarke
Hexnode UEM

Marked SolutionPending Review

chrisnock

Participant

1 day ago

Marked SolutionPending Review

thanks ben, appreciate it. let me try this out via script

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Turn off natural scrolling on MacsSolved

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