Smooth Scrolling unavailable
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Why can I enable smooth scrolling on Chrome, but in Vivaldi it's not available?
On MacBook Air M1
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Is it the same Chromium version? In general Vivaldi doesn’t seem to alter Chromium flags. Also be aware changing flags is unsupported and only for testing and development purposes. I use some myself from time to time, but they can be discontinued, stop to work, or introduce bugs.
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In Preferences > Webpages, there is a setting for smooth scrolling which I have set, but scrolling is not smooth - it is jerky.
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Made a very detailed post about it on reddit a year ago.
This is still not changed.You can get it to work perfectly when you start Vivaldi with the
--enable-smooth-scrollingflag which I explained in my comment there on reddit.I have no clue why Vivaldi decides to disable smooth scrolling on M1 MacBooks in the year 2024, but if it is present with a clean profile then the only remaining option is that
A.) the OS is overwriting it somehow.
B.) Vivaldi has this disabling effect hardcoded for MacOS/M1 MacBookNo idea how to push this topic, but I think it is a major flaw in the UX for Vivaldi users with MacOS. Because it basically disables a whole CSS feature set.
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FYI, in Chrome/Chromium, the #smooth-scrolling flag has been Unavailable on macOS for YEARS... and the flag is enabled by default.
So... If the Chromium flag was Unavailable, I wondered why we even offered a "Smooth Scrolling" option in the Webpages Settings on the Vivaldi macOS builds. I presumed that it did nothing and even filed a bug to have the setting removed. As it turned out, this setting was not a "no-op" after all, and it can be used to enable/disable CSS smooth scrolling.
I just tested the Smooth Scrolling setting again using the following as a test case: https://www.w3schools.com/howto/howto_css_smooth_scroll.asp
With the "Smooth Scrolling" option unchecked, Vivaldi gets invoked with --disable-smooth-scrolling and the CSS smooth scrolling test page jump scrolls.
With the "Smooth Scrolling" option enabled, Vivaldi gets invoked without --disable-smooth-scrolling, and CSS smooth scrolling works as expected.
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One other thing: "Smooth Scrolling" also affects web page scrolling when you use Home/End (Command +
/ 
) and the space bar. -
Thanks for your Reddit post, @Diesmo. That's the only thing that worked.
Is anyone closer to understanding why this functionality is unavailable by default? Every other Chromium browser I've tested (namely, Chrome, Arc, and Brave) has smooth scrolling out of the box. Safari and Orion have it, as does Firefox. So at least on macOS Vivaldi seems to be the odd one out.
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@lemontheme if even Vivaldi moderators can not explain this and are also unable to push this problem for years, then I guess we are out of luck and are tiny share of userbase which is not important enough.
Considering this is a problem for years at this points and it gets no attention. I think I also filed a bug years ago about this, but not sure what the tracking number was cause I lost it and Vivaldi is generally very secretly about their bug reports.
For smooth scrolling css work I switched back to Chrome.
But given that Vivaldi has recently also broken the DevTools, when touch input is simulated, I'll currently considering to move back to Chrome completely, as I get quite tired of bugs that affect my daily dev work. -
@Diesmo Your reason for switching back is funnily enough why I stuck with Chrome for so long, despite knowing how bad Chrome is for its users. I don't do front-end work, but my patience for browser shenanigans when I'm working is very limited. For all its flaws, Chrome does actually stay out of the way most of the time.
Anyway, back on topic, that's too bad. Vivaldi on macOS is mostly a smooth experience and the platform is certainly not neglected. For example, last month's problem where cmd+T closed more than one tab was fixed pretty quickly. Also, all screen caps posted to the Vivaldi Browser YT channel this last year were filmed on macOS.
All of this makes it seem rather odd that this easy-to-fix oversight hasn't yet been addressed. I mean, smooth scrolling works. It just needs to be enabled by default, so that Vivaldi behaves like all other Chromium-based browsers. And 'enable smooth scrolling' should do something. That's everything that needs to happen.
For the time being I've saved this Apple Script to my Applications/ directory so that I can open Vivaldi with smooth scrolling enabled from my app launcher.
do shell script "open -a /Applications/Vivaldi.app --args --enable-smooth-scrolling"Until this gets fixed, though, I won't be recommending Vivaldi to anyone. When you recommend browser alternatives people want 'same but better'. 'Better but also worse' doesn't quite sell as well.
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@lemontheme Could you maybe report this issue again? Like I said I think I reported back in the days when I discovered it, but I don't have the number anymore.
I also do not wanna do duplicated reports from the same user. So maybe you could report it, so it's already at least a 2nd user that is affected, judging by the two reports from two different users?If you decide to do so, would you be so kind to post the number here?
And good idea with the script.
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Also, all screen caps posted to the Vivaldi Browser YT channel this last year were filmed on macOS.
I don’t know the actual situation at Vivaldi, but media/marketing people tend to use macOS and it is therefore oftentimes the first choice when showcasing software.
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@Diesmo Done! The issue number is VB-109991
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@luetage True, no clue what the devs are using. Probably a mix of systems.
I guess what I meant by my observation is that I see no reason to assume that macOS is treated as an afterthought. Hence, my confusion about smooth scrolling – something I've obviously been taking for granted in previous browsers – being overlooked here.
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Solution here https://forum.vivaldi.net/post/786203.
TL;DR disable 'Show on startup' in the profile manager
