HOW TO STOP SAFARI’S SMOOTH SCROLLING USING THE ARROW KEYS
Jeff Johnson is the hero behind StopTheMadness, Link Unshortener, and other must-have browser and social-media utilities that let you override and defeat websites’ attempts to hijack control of your cursors, mouse, and Control-click. (I gave StopTheMadness 5 out of 5 stars in a Mac Gems review last year.)
But what has he done for us lately? He’s figured out how to disable smooth scrolling, a surprise feature added by Apple in Safari 16.4 for macOS. If you didn’t notice, with this version of Safari, pressing and releasing the down or up arrow on a Safari page scrolls the page continuously until you tap a key or use a mouse to regain control. The change is baffling. Who asked for this? Why introduce it in midstream? And the biggest question of all: Why is there no checkbox to disable it?
Johnson has documented a multi-step operation to fix this problem. You can read his quick post, or this more detailed step-by-step if you’re unfamiliar with Safari’s Debug mode and the Terminal.
1. System Settings or Preferences
macOS Ventura: Open Apple menu → System Settings → Privacy & Security; go to the Privacy section.
macOS Monterey and older: Open Apple menu → System Preferences → Security & Privacy and click on the Privacy section to open it.
2. Full Disk Access
macOS Ventura: Click Full Disk Access.
macOS Monterey and older: Select Full Disk Access in the left column. Click the lock icon at the bottom left of the settings window and authenticate your identity with Touch ID, your password, or a Watch.
3. Activate Terminal
macOS Ventura: Look for Terminal in the main window and flip its switch on. You will have to enter an administrator username and password after flipping the switch.
In the main section of the window, you will see a list of apps. Click the plus-sign (+) button and navigate to Applications → Utilities. You should find the Terminal app there; select the Terminal
