Lock vertical scroll possible?

Questions & Suggestions
1

Is it possible to "lock" the vertical scroll when the mouse is hovering over an action with its own scroll such as shell, applescript, etc?
One of the things that always bothered me is that when I scroll to see the content on one of those windows, 90% of the time it scrolls it a little bit, then it reverts to scrolling the whole macro. I'm not a fan of manually clicking the scroll bar to use it. I like the scroll wheel (that's why it was invented... right?).
It seems, not sure if by accident, that sometimes holding shift, cmd, or alt/option seems to kinda lock it, but not 100%. It decreases the chances of it scrolling the macro to maybe 20%, but still not perfect.

Is there a way to achieve this by changing some setting or using a different modifier key?
If not, would this be possible to implement, for those of you who are more familiar with how KM works behind the scenes in terms of UI and all that?

Would like to get some feedback before approaching Peter about this issue.

2 Likes
2

Yeah it is annoying. I've found that by clicking inside the scrolling area usually lets me scroll normally without having the whole macro scroll. Have you tried that?

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3

It might well be the most needlessly annoying thing I've found in the Editor.

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4

My guess is that Peter will say the KM Editor's behaviour is limited by the tools and APIs he uses to create the Editor. Since this is normal behaviour for other apps like Safari, the API developers probably consider it an acceptable problem.

5

Whatever the reason it is super annoying and makes for a bad user experience.

2 Likes
6

Wouldn't be too hard to make a macro that opens the text content of the currently selected action in TextEdit/BBEdit/ScriptDebugger.

7

This doesn't work for me. My best option is to scroll a bit and then grab the scrollbar when it appears.

An option to make the scrollbars always visible or resize the text field's height would be nice alternatives.

8

KM honours the System Setting "Appearance"->"Show scroll bars".

A total abomination of a default setting from Apple's "make it look like iOS" phase, and I urge every right-thinking person to hit the "Always" radio button ASAP...

5 Likes
9

I'll give it a test run. Thanks for the tip!

EDIT: Can confirm this setting is much better for me system-wide :+1:

10

I don't know the intricacies of building an app, but if using a modifier could lock the macro's scrolling completely (whatever makes all actions go up and down), that would be a step forward, I guess. So locking it with a custom key combination set by the user would make the macro non-scrollable, while maybe allowing the action's text scroll?

Again, I have no idea what's happening in the background, so this is just a suggestion. Maybe others here can share their feedback on why this could/couldn't work?

11

As an audio and video editor, there are simply far too many moving parts to even try to make do with the hardware of a normal mouse. The way my screen jumping around was slowing my work down constantly drove me to expand those inputs.. ending up in places like this forum :slight_smile:

"Trackballs" are the standard solution, with a scroll wheel.
If you lift slightly, the wheel finger can turn it independently , reducing to 1-2% of that 20% mentioned above of missed, intended scrolls.

Sometimes people feel they are bulky for some operations. I like to use a flat trackpad beside the trackball, too. I go back and forth.

12

I've observed this too. I'm sure this is just a KM editor bug, but It'd be great to have it fixed.

13

Like I said, it's not at all just a KM editor bug. It might require KM editor tweaks to improve the situation, and it might be related to MacOS changes to mouse operation.

However, these changes occurred with Sonoma, when I had to alter the acceleration and sensitivity settings very carefully, related specifically to scrolling, for apps such as Pro Tools, Adobe Premiere Pro, iZotope RX, and Ableton Live.

I use the app "SteerMouse" which allows me to use, quite similarly to what the OP of the post described, to control each app and it's scrolling using modifiers I choose. There -are- things that change outside of an app's design which are in the OS, and suddenly change a lot of apps. This was my experience, for sure.

The acceleration and sensitivity are major factors, when one is a few pixels in or out. Perhaps there can and should be a fix from the KM Editor side, but only because most users will not use SteerMouse and MacOS keeps changing the acceleration settings (which makes the pixels jump slightly more than they did previously, which I would bet is causing these perceived changes rather than a "bug").

In audio and video editing, specifically, there are LOTS of "scrollable regions within scrollable regions" such as values on knobs among arrays of tracks with scores of notes. Thus, it's -very- important where the mouse is exactly. In SteerMouse I had to totally eliminate acceleration (using modifiers) of the cursor while scrolling in many apps, but only after the update to Sonoma, which allowed me to not lose my mouse as much.

If the acceleration is randomly increased by MacOS versions, this happens again and again! And to emphasize again, there are so many mice to choose from, that's why I use an app that allows me to do things differently than the OS, the mouse, and other apps make me do.

I mostly go on at length here because others might have similar issues and shouldn't be confused that it's only a KM editor bug when it's a "scroll within scroll" thing for me in KM editor and a huge number of apps, and I have working experimental solution. I had to update Adobe Premiere 2023 to Adobe Premiere 2024, and recently to Adobe Premiere 2025. The fact that the scrolling was messed up again after forgetting rushed me to SteerMouse to copy over my cursor acceleration and sensitivity settings.