How to Turn Off Scrolling Inertia on Mac

Flick two fingers and the page keeps rolling after you let go — that's scrolling inertia, and macOS tucks its off-switch in Accessibility, not Trackpad settings, which is why most people assume it can't be turned off. For reading it feels natural. For precise work — audio timelines, spreadsheets, design canvases — the coasting overshoots your target every single time. Here's the switch.

Turn off scrolling inertia

1. Open System Settings → Accessibility.
2. Select Pointer Control under the Motor section.
3. Click Trackpad Options…
4. Make sure Use trackpad for scrolling is on, then set the Scrolling pop-up menu to Without inertia and click OK.

The change applies immediately and the path is the same on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia. To undo, set the same menu back to With inertia (the default).

What changes, exactly

With inertia on, macOS measures the speed of your fingers at the moment they leave the glass and keeps scrolling, decelerating like a spun wheel — a flick can carry a page a long way. With inertia off, scrolling maps one-to-one to finger contact: content moves while your fingers move, and stops dead the instant they lift or stop. Nothing else is affected — scrolling speed, direction, and every other gesture stay as they were. The first minute feels abrupt, like the trackpad lost its polish; that's the coasting you're no longer getting, and it fades fast.

That one-to-one mapping is the whole appeal. A two-centimeter finger movement scrolls the same distance every time, whether you moved slowly or quickly. Your hands can learn exact distances — which is impossible when a slightly-faster flick coasts an extra half page.

Who should try it

• Audio and video editors — scrubbing a timeline that keeps drifting after you stop is maddening; without inertia, the playhead area stays exactly where you put it, every time.
• Spreadsheet workers — landing on a specific row without the post-flick slide saves a correction scroll every time, hundreds of times a day.
• Designers and photo retouchers — panning a zoomed canvas becomes exact, like sliding paper with your hand.
• Anyone motion-sensitive — the extra animated movement inertia adds is a real trigger for some people, and this menu removes most of it. (Pair it with Reduce Motion in Accessibility → Display for the calmest setup macOS offers.)

The trade-off is honest: long documents take more strokes, because you can no longer flick-and-coast down a page. Readers who scroll long articles all day usually keep inertia on; people who scroll to position things usually prefer it off. Two days of use tells you which you are.

One caveat while you evaluate: some apps add their own smoothing on top of system scrolling — browsers animate keyboard and wheel scrolls, and some editors ease scroll stops. If a page still glides slightly after you disable inertia, that residual motion is the app's, not the trackpad's; test in Finder or TextEdit to feel the pure setting.

Scope: trackpad only

This menu governs the built-in trackpad and external Magic Trackpads. It does not change a Magic Mouse or a scroll-wheel mouse — macOS 13 through 15 exposes no equivalent inertia switch for mice, so momentum from a Magic Mouse flick stays regardless. The nearby Scrolling speed slider in the same sheet is a separate control: speed sets how far each finger movement scrolls, inertia sets what happens after your fingers stop. Tune speed first, then decide on inertia — a slightly slower, inertia-free scroll is the most predictable combination macOS offers. Both survive restarts and travel with your user account, not the hardware.