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I have an Apple Magic Mouse, and in Safari, when I swipe my fingers left and right on the mouse, first the page scrolls left or right if there is a horizontal scrollbar, and then if there is no scrollbar or the scrollbar is already at the edge, then Safari will go back/forward in my history.

This is particularly annoying when I am trying to scroll left / right, and accidentally scroll too far and navigate off the page.

For example, if I'm answering / editing a question on StackOverflow which has

some really long code block example which is so wide it gets a horizontal scroll bar or the text area has a scroll bar
some really long code block example which is so wide it gets a horizontal scroll bar or the text area has a scroll bar
some really long code block example which is so wide it gets a horizontal scroll bar or the text area has a scroll bar
some really long code block example which is so wide it gets a horizontal scroll bar or the text area has a scroll bar

if I quickly swipe left / right to read the code, I often accidentally leave the page I'm on.

Can I disable the "swipe to navigate" back / forward function of Safari? I only want to use swiping to scroll, not to navigate.

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Look under "More Gestures" the "Mouse" System Preferences pane: Screen capture of the "More Gestures" panel

Set it to two fingers or disable it altogether.

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  • 4
    I feel so stupid now. I swear I looked for this before and couldn't find it! Thanks!
    – Josh
    Commented Dec 2, 2011 at 0:28
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    is there a way to disable this on Safari only? I like this behavior on all other apps (Preview for example)
    – whaley
    Commented Feb 29, 2012 at 21:08
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    Darn. Its too bad that you have to turn off the feature all together. Its a useful feature for when reading ebooks or pdfs, but an EXTREMELY annoying feature in safari. Anyone know of another solution?
    – user20213
    Commented Mar 16, 2012 at 4:56
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    It's worth clarifying that this solution also works for the same problem in Chrome (and probably other browsers too, although I haven't tested that).
    – Andrew Ferrier
    Commented Dec 17, 2012 at 16:23
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    Agreed. This behavior is great, except for web browsers, where it should be taken out and shot. I've been using cmd-bracket far too long to need this gesture. All it's good for is discarding forum posts in progress.
    – Marshall Eubanks
    Commented Apr 17, 2014 at 19:03
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BetterTouchTool is a free solution: it lets you set up multi-touch gestures differently between different applications. I've had no issues using it yet, although I've only been doing so for a few days and only on Lion. It has received a respectable bunch of positive mentions from places like TUAW, MacWorld, and Lifehacker, and the only less-than-great reviews I've been able to find for it seem to be along the general lines of "I wish it also brushed my teeth" and "I turned off $feature and $feature stopped working"

Personally, it has saved my MagicMouse from the ignominy of sharing duty and mousing space with a wired Mighty Mouse.

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