[jlokier]

I think the hidden scrollbars are great. They remove clutter, yet are always readily available when needed.

Scrolling in MacOS is one of my favourite things about the UI compared with various versions of Linux and Windows I've used. This is due to the two-finger swipe gesture being really well done and the scroll bar being available when needed.

I used Linux as my primary desktop non-stop for 19 years, and in the end the scrolling had got worse. The Ubuntu desktop weird scroll handle thing was awful. MacOS scrolling was so much more ergonomic than that it convinced me to switch. I still develop primarily on Linux, but prefer to do it over SSH even though I have a Lunux desktop when I want it.

It doesn't take long using MacOS to develop an instinct for scrolling things with two-finger swipe, and scrolling is generally a very safe thing to do so trying it is harmless. The way swipe scrolling is independent of the focused window is just right, and the scrollbar which appears is easily grabbed on the occasions it's needed.

[valuearb]

Problem is the scrollbars often don’t appear when needed, so user has no idea they are there. Worse, even when they appear, they sometimes disappear when you reach for the thumb to move many pages. It’s excruciating on documents with hundreds of pages.

Disappearing scrollbars also violate the original Mac UI principles, which were based on an enormous amount of human factors research.

[wander_homer]

I don't have a Mac to try it, so would you care to explain how the hidden scrollbar works? Like when you open a dialog, do the scrollbars of its scrollable elements always appear and then slowly fade out, or do how do you know something is scrollable without trying to scroll?

[saagarjha]

Yes, scrollbars are supposed to flash when a view appears. This can sometimes not happen, or be hidden (say you open something in a tab and the code is not correctly written to handle visibility, or the more obvious case that you just didn't see it happen) but it's intended to let you know that scrollers are there.