How to get the three finger 'scroll to top' back in mountain lion?

Question

Remember in Snow Leopard there was a gesture using three fingers to scroll to the top of webpages? Has anyone worked out a way of getting that back?

Answer 1

I looked in System Preferences and didn't see any options for a three-finger swipe gesture. However, there are many applications that enable you to create custom gestures. Here are a couple (these two are both free):

1. Better Touch Tool

Here's a description from their download page:

BetterTouchTool adds many new, fully customizable gestures to Magic Mouse, Macbook Touchpad and now even the Magic Trackpad!

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These gestures are customizable:

• three finger swipes (up/down/left/right)
• three finger tap
• three finger click

There are many other gestures that are customizable, but you seem like you want some sort of three finger gesture so I listed those.

1. MagicPrefs

Mac OS X-only: MagicPrefs lets you create custom gestures (and override existing ones) to provide new multitouch functionality to your Apple input devices. It's like the great Multiclutch, which serves a similar purpose, but with added power and precision that gives you serious control over even the nuances of your gestures.

You have five fingers and MagicPrefs recognizes that, letting you assign actions to taps and clicks based on the number of fingers present on the mouse. Additionally, it supports swiping, rotating, and pinching actions. You can make these actions do carry out tasks like zoom in and out of the screen, start Exposé or Dashboard, initiate Quicklook, and even run AppleScripts. If you find a gesture is too sensitive, or not sensitive enough, you can adjust that. You can even create presets for specific circumstances, so you can assign certain gestures for when you're working and others when you're gaming.

Answer 2

In Trackpad System Preferences, set 'Swipe between pages' option to three fingers. Quick scroll to top and bottom seems to work, at least in Firefox.

Answer 3

In settings under "More Gestures" I changed the top 'Swipe between pages' setting to 'swipe with two or three fingers' and it's working great in Firefox and Safari. No more speed-scrolling for the fingers!

Answer 4

I saw that this is a known issue. The workaround is to hold down the Option key and then do the three finger swipe. I miss my "home" and "end" scrolling, too!

Answer 5

Under "More Gestures", "Swipe between pages", there are three options - choose "Swipe with three fingers" - quick scroll to top/bottom with three finger vertical swipe is back! (Firefox). Note that under "Point and Drag", "Three finger drag" should be deselected.

Answer 6

The fix is: Switch "Mission Control" to four fingers. Then when three fingers are used in a vertical direction, the page jumps to top or bottom of page.

This works!

Answer 7

alt + three fingers up/down should do the trick.

Answer 8

It may seem annoying to have to install a piece of software to accomplish this, but BetterTouchTool really is the best option because you can do so much with it - and it's free. I have three finger scroll down set to take me to the end/bottom of the page and three fingers up takes me to the top. I use both of these all the time. In web browsers, I use three fingers left & right to switch from tab to tab, left & right. I'd go CRAZY without that feature now. The possibilities are pretty much endless, and it is very easy to work with. I have poor vision, so I use four finger scroll down to zoom in and four fingers up to zoom out. It's so handy.

With BetterTouchTool, you can also program keyboard hotkeys. I have a bunch of custom hotkeys I use to do all sorts of things, including fire off various applescripts. I mean, really... who uses the brightness keyboard keys on a desktop? Not me. So, I reassigned them with BetterTouchTool.

Even better still... if you have an Apple Remote that you're not using, you can use BetterTouchTool to assign what you want the buttons to do.

BetterTouchTool will give you so much power over customizing how you interact with your Mac. I've been using it for ages and I'd go crazy if I had to give it up. Even if it cost a hundred dollars, I'd recommend it. I'm not kidding when I say it's literally THAT good. And it's free.