Scrollbars - Make Them Bigger
snee.la
If you want to skip the floof and see the settings to tweak on Firefox, go to Settings to Tweak below. Don’t you love how tiny scroll bars have become??? I sure do! A bunch of other people on lemmy totally love it too! Just search for scrollbars on lemmy and you’ll see the amount of love there is in the tiny-scrollbar-loving community: Annoyed with the scrollbars being tiny on Firefox, I messed around with some settings in firefox’s about:config (https://support.

Tl;Dr:

In about:config, I changed these preferences:

  • widget.non-native-theme.gtk.scrollbar.round-thumb: false - This makes the scrollbar not have rounded edges
  • widget.non-native-theme.gtk.scrollbar.thumb-size: 1 - This makes the scrollbar ‘chonkier’ within the scrollbar region
  • widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size.override: 20 - This increases the scrollbar region size. Larger number = wider scrollbar
  • Make sure widget.gtk.overlay-scrollbars.enabled is set to false - This should have been set to false when you enabled “Always show scrollbars”

On Windows, Firefox follows the system setting (System Settings > Accessibility > Visual Effects > Always show scrollbars).

  • HouseWolf@lemm.eeEnglish
    32·
    10 months ago

    The 2 pixel wide scroll bar has been a pet peeve of mine for a while on my 1440p display.

    Thank you stranger!

    • n3er0o@lemmy.ml
      132·
      10 months ago

      Interesting. I use a 32" 1440p screen (100% scaling) and I prefer the smaller one. I always found scroll bars to be unnecessarily large (especially in drop downs) as I solely use then as a visual indicator.

      I’m glad we have options so everyone can have their preferred size!

      • /home/governorkeagan@lemdro.idEnglish
        2·
        10 months ago

        I find there’s a small line between it being too small and too large. It’s great that we can have the option to choose though.

    • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
      72·
      10 months ago

      There’s a good reason they are done that way, namely that few people ever need to directly interact with them. People instead scroll content with their mouse wheel, touchpad or via touch devices directly, and hence the scroll bar is relegated to a pure indicator of roughly where on the page you are, which for many pages isn’t even necessary.

      That being said: If you set Windows 11 to “Always show scroll bars” - which you would if you need them as actual input surfaces - then it also signals all apps to show them at full size again. Which Firefox in fact does, as I just found out.

  • DreamButt@lemmy.worldEnglish
    97·
    10 months ago

    Genuine question. Who still uses a scrollbar for more than a visual indicator of progress?

    • kubica@kbin.social
      3·
      10 months ago

      Not usually but I also hate to be looking for the scroll position for 30 seconds when I want to see the length of the page. Depending on the colors of the page I have troubles finding.

    • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
      3·
      10 months ago

      In Firefox, never. In some applications, they have the “lines per tick” for your scroll wheel WAY too low, like 1 per. In those applications I try to, but they inevitably have visual-only scroll bars.

  • verysoft@kbin.social
    59·
    10 months ago

    Firefox kinda sucks OOTB, these tweaks along with text render and smooth scrolling ones should be the default.

    • n3er0o@lemmy.ml
      31·
      10 months ago

      Could you elaborate on the text render and smooth scroll tweaks? I’m always interested in toying around with this kind of stuff :D

      • verysoft@kbin.social
        6·
        10 months ago

        I don’t remember all the settings I changed, it was years ago, but when I initially swapped from Chrome I found the text on Firefox was horrible. Here’s what I found though for text:
        gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.enhanced_contrast = 100
        gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.pixel_structure = 5
        gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.rendering_mode = 5
        gfx.font_rendering.fallback.always_use_cmaps = true

        And for smooth scrolling:
        general.smoothScroll.currentVelocityWeighting = 0
        general.smoothScroll.lines.durationMaxMS = 250
        general.smoothScroll.msdPhysics.enabled = true
        general.smoothScroll.stopDecelerationWeighting = 0.82
        mousewheel.min_line_scroll_amount = 23

        These tweaks made it much nicer for me personally, of course text rendering may differ on OS (I use W10).