Reverse two finger scroll direction?

Question

Two-fingered scrolling is working fine, but is there a way that I can reverse the direction? It seems backwards opposed to the way OSX does it.

Answer 1

The reverse scrolling you're talking about is called "natural scrolling," and can be enabled several different ways in Ubuntu. Here's an article on OMG! Ubuntu! detailing how to install the software that will get you what you need. If you're familiar with Ubuntu Tweak, you can also enable it in the latest release.

Answer 2

I don’t know which version of Ubuntu you’re using, but in 13.04 (and I guess in 12.10) it’s possible via touchpad settings.

So first, open System Settings > Mouse and Touchpad. As seen in the screenshot below if there’s an option for content sticks to fingers, check it. Then the scrollbars will work in reverse direction.

This is accessible via Dconf Editor as well. Go to org > gnome > settings-daemon > peripherals > touchpad and check natural-scroll.

Answer 3

The naturalscrolling package doesn't seem to work for Ubuntu 12.10. I installed Ubuntu Tweak:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tualatrix/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-tweak

and you can adjust scrolling at

Tweaks -> Miscellaneous -> Natural Scrolling

Answer 4

The simplest and IMHO the best way to achieve this on Ubuntu 12.10 is:

sudoedit /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics-conf

add those lines in the Section "InputClass"

Option "VertScrollDelta" "-111"
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "-111"

reboot and have fun with natural scrolling :)

If you want to try your settings without reboot, you can use synclient

synclient VertScrollDelta=-111
synclient HorizScrollDelta=-111

The changes are immediately applied, but won't stay after reboot if you don't add them in 50-synaptics-conf file.

Answer 5

Based on this blog, the script below worked for me on Ubuntu 12.04. It sets your touchpad's horizontal and vertical scrolling scale-factors both to negative values (which usually ensures "natural" scrolling). It does it "under the hood" so all your applications will be affected, even those that don't pay attention to the settings adjusted by tweakUI. Several unnecessary commands and comments are there just so you can see what's going on. You'll probably want to turn off any natural scrolling settings in TweakUI or similar.

xinput list | grep "[Tt]ouch" | grep "id=([0-9]+)"
# ⎜   ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad                  id=11    [slave  pointer  (2)]
id=`xinput list | grep -Po "[Tt]ouch[^=]*id=[0-9]+" | grep -Po [0-9]+`
xinput --list-props $id | grep "Scrolling Distance"
# Synaptics Scrolling Distance (269):    -107, -107
# Synaptics Circular Scrolling Distance (282):    0.100000
prop_id=`xinput --list-props $id | grep -P ".*[^C][^i][^r][^c][^u][^l][^a][^r]\sScrolling Distance" | grep -Po '\([0-9]+\)' | grep -Po "[0-9]+"`
prop_xy=xinput --list-props $id | grep -P ".*[^C][^i][^r][^c][^u][^l][^a][^r]\sScrolling Distance" | grep -Po '\s+[-+]{0,1}[0-9]+\,\s*[-+]{0,1}[0-9]+' | tr -d '-'
xinput --list-props $id | grep -P ".*[^C][^i][^r][^c][^u][^l][^a][^r]\sScrolling Distance" | grep -Po '\s+[-+]?[0-9]+[,]?' | tr -d '-' | tr -d ',' | tr ' \t' '-' | xargs xinput --set-prop $id $prop_id
nautilus -q
nautilus -n &