Scrolling in Microsoft Remote Desktop on a Mac w/ Magic Trackpad 2

macos scroll remote-desktop
theDom picture theDom · Jan 6, 2016 · Viewed 8.5k times · Source

I'm experiencing wonky behavior using a Mac to remote into a Windows 7 PC using Microsoft's Remote Desktop app for the Mac, and using a Magic Trackpad 2 as my primary input device. The problems arise primarily when scrolling in various applications in Windows. It appears the Magic Trackpad is flooding windows with scroll events, causing unpredictable behavior in many applications. Some scroll ok, others whip around or back and forth, or stutter uncontrollably. I probably need to find a way to "filter" out this flood of scroll events into something more manageable by Windows, but I am unaware of any existing apps or utilities to do so? Has anyone else experienced this issue and/or have any potential solutions to it?

Answer

theDom picture theDom · Jan 6, 2016

A bit more research, and I've got at least a partial solution to the issue. It helps greatly to turn off some of the "Magic" Apple imparts to its trackpads. Namely, turning off 'scrolling with inertia' helps with scrolling when using Remote Desktop. The default functionality for magic trackpad scrolling is to apply inertia to your scroll, making pages continue to scroll after you release the pad like they have weight. While this looks and feels cool, it wreaks havoc with some older windows apps. The trick is to turn this feature off you have to open the Mac's Accessibility control panel, not the one for the trackpad itself. Within Accessibility there are additional mouse and trackpad tweaks, one of which is to turn off inertial scrolling. Also, reducing the scrolling speed to its lowest setting makes Remote Desktop scrolling a bit easier. Hope this helps others.

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