Reverse Mouse Wheel Scroll ala OS X Lion in Ubuntu 10.04

Learned a new command today: xinput. This allows you to (re)configure how X11 maps your input devices.

If you are on Ubuntu, and you’d want what Apple calls the “Natural Scrolling”, then you may do the following:

In the shell:

$ xinput list
⎡ Virtual core pointer                    	id=2	[master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer              	id=4	[slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Macintosh mouse button emulation        	id=11	[slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ SIGMACH1P USB Keykoard                  	id=9	[slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ A4Tech USB Mouse                        	id=12	[slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                   	id=3	[master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard             	id=5	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                            	id=6	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                            	id=7	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard            	id=10	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ SIGMACH1P USB Keykoard                  	id=8	[slave  keyboard (3)]

In my case, my mouse is an “A4Tech USB Mouse”. Yours might be different so check carefully the output of xinput list.

I reversed mine using:

xinput set-button-map "A4Tech USB Mouse" 1 2 3 5 4 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Check your wheel up/down scrolling. That’s it.

But this is not a permanent setting; it will be lost after a reboot. Add this command in the:

System > Preferences > Startup Applications.

The so called natural scrolling is a mode that was introduced in the release of OS X Lion; which corresponds to how one scrolls on an iPad/iPhone. It does feel awkward at first, but I retrained my brain/hand in continued usage. It does make sense when you think “I want to scroll the content” vs. “I want to scroll the scrollbar”.

People either love or hate this.