Two-Finger Scrolling on your Hackintosh
**THIS POST IS OUTDATED PLEASE REFER TO THE SNOW LEOPARD GUIDE**
Alright well before we get started let me show you a little video of what two-finger scrolling looks on my laptop.
1) Alright, the first thing you have to do is install the “Trackpad.prefpane” To do this simply drag the “Trackpad.prefpane” that is in the pack to your desktop and then open up terminal and type the following:
- sudo -s
- Enter your password if prompted
- mkdir /BackupPreferencePanes
- cp -R /System/Library/PreferencePanes/Trackpad.prefPane /BackupPreferencePanes
- rm -rf /System/Library/PreferencePanes/Trackpad.prefPane
- cp -R ~/Desktop/Trackpad.prefPane /System/Library/PreferencePanes/
- exit
2) Now Kexthelper the “ApplePS2Controller.kext” and reboot.
3) Now we are going to have to do is install the ALPS glidepad driver created by deamobile over at insanelymac. Now this will install the driver and FFScroll and it will prompt you to reboot.
4) When your computer comes back up it will prompt you with something along the lines of “FFscroll could not load” click “fix” and then shut down again.
5) Now go to the pack and copy “com.apple.driver.ApplePS2Trackpad.plist” to: /Users/[YourUsername]/Library/Preferences AND /Library/Preferences.
It’s important not to open the FFscroll Preference Pane because it will overwrite the plist and the values will be thrown off.
6) Copy and Paste the FFScrollDaemon directory from the install package to /Library/StartupItems. Enter your password to authenticate. This will allow FFScrollDaemon to startup automatically when you start OSX. The next time you shut down, it will ask you to fix it, click Fix and then reboot your computer.
7) Now from here you’re going to have to open up “Terminal” and type:
- sudo killall -9 FFScrollDaemon
- sudo /usr/local/bin/FFScrollDaemon
Now everything should be good but to get it working as smoothly as mine you’re going to have to attain Smartscroll.
You can purchase it there or get your paws on it any other way you know how.
9 ) Once you install Smartscroll play with the settings a bit and you should be in business.
Trackpad Settings Smart Scroll Settings
**I don’t use Horizontal scroll nor do I have it enabled in any of my plists, because I don’t use it. Therefore the values for horizontal scroll will have to be experimented with by you if you’d like to have it just right. You can find more information here.**
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=88811
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=5419
How to Drag
when attempting this part i’m getting a “no matching processes were found” error
sudo killall -9 FFScrollDaemon
any advise? i’m assuming there is a space before and after the ‘-9′
thanks
Also, I can’t open FFScroll in pref panes.
Thanks again
Sorry about that, I missed a step. Thanks for pointing it out!
It’s all updated!
Make sure that when you reboot and click fix that you reboot again.
It’s a crappy process but it’s well worth it.
I have followed the instructions and got both ffscroll and smart scroll both installed and working, but I can’t seem to get the two finger scroll to work properly. I noticed that FFScroll was not working well as I couldn’t get it to calibrate. Do you have any suggestions that may help.
Thanks for the great guides you have posted by the way, they have been a great help
.
If you opened the ffscroll preference pane then it messed with the com.apple.driver.ApplePS2Trackpad.plist and you have to redo that step. Also another thing I forgot to mention, in the “Trackpad” preference pane you should have 2 finger scrolling unchecked or else it will be very jumpy.
FF Scroll leaves much to desire. I tried the two finger scrolling a long time ago and I see that it hasn’t improved without using the commercial application that you cited. Unfortunately, if I wanted to spend money on something I’d just buy a MacBook Pro. Until a free alternative or update to this method comes out, no scrolling for me.
The price of a Smartscroll in comparison to a macbook is much less expensive. $19 to make your Hackbook that much closer to a Macbook, I can’t complain with that, but I can see your argument.
Is there any way to use 2 finger scroll in iPhoto or other program that allow me zooming in photos or rotating them?
Thanks!
I had a friend of mine snag me a registered copy of the absolute latest Smart Scroll, however even after following your instructions and playing around with the options SS gives me, I still can’t get scrolling smooth or accurate enough to become useful. Half the time when I scroll, release, and scroll again — it starts scrolling in the opposite direction.
Please post some screen shots of your Smart Scroll pane and Trackpad pane under System Preferences as this appears to be a key part of the tutorial that’s amiss. (Disabling Smart Scroll leaves quite a mess, so the secret is definitely within your settings that you didn’t include!)
On a side note, running XxX 10.5.6, after applying these steps, my media keys are fucked and do not launch anything. I double-checked Butler and everything appears to be in order, however the key presses are no longer read by the system at all. I confirmed this by trying to re-map one of the keys, and the prev track, stop, play/pause and next track keys are not responding.
And by the looks of this setup, rotation is not possible however there is an option for zoom, you have to play around with it. Unfortunately after playing around with it for half an hour, I’m able to get it as smooth as a real Mac. It either scrolls too fast, too slow, doesn’t scroll at all or scrolls in the wrong direction. While using Smart Scroll *is* better than playing with FF Scroll options, this isn’t looking promising without being able to duplicate Genaro’s *exact* settings (Read previous post).
Media keys have been fixed by deleting ApplePS2Controller.kext and applying the following ApplePS2Controller.kext, repairing permissions and rebooting. Scrolling wasn’t effected and is still cumbersome (but functional) alongside media keys and Butler.
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?znj22qtzngc
I updated the post with some screenshots, and I haven’t had the horizontal scrolling problem because I don’t have it enabled. You could try and mess with the plist to get horizontal scrolling to the right settings but I never use it so I never messed with it. It’d be great if you could get horizontal scrolling to work but it isn’t particularly high on my priority list.
Those settings (screen shots) worked.
Just to re-cap, you *NEED* Smart Scroll before two finger scrolling will work smooth for you. It’s an absolute must as FF Scroll just won’t cut it by itself, but is still required to be installed.
$19 at http://www.marcmoini.com/order.html
You can also find it on various torrent sites and if you’re skeptical about trojans, you can download the trial copy and apply a serial number. Just remember to run Little Snitch and block outgoing connections from the application. (I do not condone piracy)
With my plist settings you should be able to manage with FFscroll, I went alright with it for about 2 months and it worked pretty well just with smart scroll it gives it that little boost to make it that much better.
A quick note, The best thing to do when two-finger scrolling is to keep your two fingers on the same level. It makes scrolling a lot more responsive.
I wouldn’t advise it. FF scroll’s sheer lack of functionality and simple options are the reason why, like my previous trackpad setup, was FUBAR when it came to scrolling. Buy the app.
One thing I did notice, Smart Scroll doesn’t play well with Office ‘08. It doesn’t allow the “flick” motion scrolling that Smart Scroll advertises and that works on other apps such as Firefox, Audium, iTunes, etc. I’m not sure why but when I’m scrolling through mail in Entourage, it’s a hard finger-to-screen scroll that doesn’t move very fast.
Hmm I’ve never used Entourage but I know in Word and Excel it functions just like every other application.
Tapping and holding to drag a window, scroll bar, etc. doesn’t appear to be working. While you can tap, and double click, etc., you can’t seem to “hold” the tap down so you can move windows around, etc. Anyone else having this problem? I can enable the drag and tap to release but that doesn’t function as you’d think and something as basic as doing multiple clicks to highlight text doesn’t seem to work all the time. For example I can double tap and highlight the URL in Firefox, but I can’t highlight all of this text on this page. Weird stuff…. Even with tap to click I’m still finding myself using the mouse button now because of this, though scrolling is nice.
Richard, when you tap and drag do you double tap? Because tap and drag works perfectly for me, when I get home I can make a video demonstrating it. I can also tap to highlight quiet easily.
It only works on Drag Lock, not simply Dragging. Not sure what’s going on here. As soon as I disable Drag Lock, for example as I write this — I can no longer tap and drag the scroll bar and it appears that after disabling Drag Lock, my mouse clicks (touch) seem to need a lot more pressure to respond.
In terms of the scroll bar and just about everything with the touchpad such as highlighting and dragging do you double tap or single tap?
As cool as two finger scrolling is why dont we just get the normal option of scrolling to work (side and bottom of trackpad).
I’ve actually tried to get it but I’ve been unsuccessful in all of my attempts. There is a Kext that supposedly works and I’ve tried it and have yet to get it to work.
Hey Genaro. Do you mind providing us the link to the kext you were referring to or the forum where it was posted because someone else might be able to get it working. Thanks!
It is one of the first developments for scrolling by phb back in 2005.
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?s=&showtopic=5419&view=findpost&p=35130
Sounded promising and it was until it gave me a kernel panic immediately after installing it. But, that why I always test new kexts on my backup partition first. So, no one install the post at insanelymac.com unless you want the kernel panic screen as your desktop background. And its too bad cause I really wanted that kext too.
It didn’t panic for me when I tried it, it was just that vertical scrolling was the choppiest thing ever and I couldn’t get it working for the life of me, I tried for about 2 days to get it to work until I just gave up and decided to work with two-finger scrolling. If you get smart scroll two finger scrolling works pretty damn well.
I have 2 finger scrolling working by following these instructions, but tap to click appears to be stuck on, I prefer it off as I always click on links by mistake, but if turning it on or off the mouse/touchpad prefs doesnt make a difference, its ALWAYS on??
Hmm, I’ve never had anyone ask me to turn off tap-to-click.
I would say your best bet is to mess with the taptolerance in the “com.apple.driver.ApplePS2Trackpad.plist”
You can somewhat find what each thing means in the plist at this thread
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?s=&showtopic=5419&view=findpost&p=500058
Good Luck!
thanks, this works great
except one very annoying thing:
if i get my box to sleep (this works only with batteries, and ac cabble unplugged, i’m happy to get a solution for that to), and weaks it the touchpads tap-to-click funtions get very weird. i can only tap by a very special finger position. it’s like that it only registers as a tap a special size (unfortunatelly a small size) of a thumb, or i don’t know how to describe it correctly. after some time, or a restart it gets working again (i don’t know yet what indicates it, i’m triing to figure it out)
does anybody have a simmilar problem, or only i’m the lucki guy?
Well I’ve heard about the trackpad being broken after sleep, I’m not too sure what causes this because it has never happened to me but I know once you get back after you sleep your computer if you go to the “Trackpad” prefpane and click the tap feature off and back on it should work again.
As for sleep at all times use these kexts, thanks to Superhai!
Sleep 10.5.6
Oh and if you’d like I can screen share with you and check out what’s up with the trackpad.
Feel free to Instant Message me on AIM at GenaroBonilla or you can email me at gbonilla@mandomhood.com
thank you
i’ll try to get this new sleep kext to get working, and we’ll see.
i was thinking the FFScrollDaemon is responsible for it, so next time when i run into thi problem i’ll try to restart that daemon.
btw, i have celeron cpu, so i didn’t installed the voodo kext (actually they are pointless ‘couse this cou doesn’t support speedstep) and probably the lack of these kext causes the sleep problem. i’ll try it out. but firstly i’ll try to separate my users partition
Predator, can you check if this is the case with your extensions folder
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aESaFl4ewCI
If so that could fix your tapping problem.
thanks for the sleep help, now i can sleep my computer with a/c plugged in
but unfortunatelly my touchpad seems to have the same issue, after sleep :S
i restarted ffscrolldaemon, recopied com.apple.driver.ApplePS2Trackpad.plist to all the two places, recopied Trackpad.prefPane, disabled/enabled tapping in the system preferences and even reinstalled the ApplePS”Controllel.kext, but after a restart my tapping functionality isn’t working in the normal way. when i finally manage to click to something in the dock it doesn’t recognise that i’ve released the touchpad, and brings up the right-click-menu. and now i don’t know how to proceed
well, i’ve figured out a workaround, but now there is no scrolling
at least with the trackpad, but i have smartscroll, so there are scrollkeys.
but i managed to copy it back from the two-finger-scroll pack with the ipc install dvd, and no i finaly have keyboard and trackpad again 
so, the trackpad driver is now appleps2trackpad.kext (there is no option to scroll, in the trackpad options, so i guess it overvrites the appleps2trackpad.kext within the appleps2controlls.kext.
all i did is: installed the appleps2trackpad.kext, from another inspiron 1525 driver pack. and than i thought, i would try to remove the appleps2controller.kext. bad idea
anyway, now when i wake it from sleep (thanks again for the sleep pack:) ) i just have to disable than reenable the tapping function in preferences, and voila it works
actually i need the sleep, need the scroll, and need the tap, so this is the best solution for now.
i wonder if there is a way to manage to auto disable/enable the tapping via command line, with some rc file tweaking. i did many similar things in gentoo, so it would be nice to automatize this whole “process”
I find it really strange that tap to click never got working with two finger scroll considering I as well as others who have followed the guide have gotten it going. I bet if you remove everything and start over it’d work but if you don’t wanna go through the trouble s’all good.
I seem to be in exactly the same boat as you, predator29. I do plan to attempt this guide from scratch again at some point; a script is just too hacky when it can be fixed properly.
i “solved” the problem. well, the two finger scrolling doesn’t work, but i don’t mind, atleast i’ve got tapping, and with smartlscroll and scrollkeys he scrolling if functional in a unique way
not so bad for a first time apple user 
i just had o write a short applescript
so what shall you do, for get the tapping working after sleep, without two finger scroll.
1) install the touchpad driver from the driver pack in this post: http://macyourpc.com/2009/03/06/dell-hackintosh-1525-drivers/ and follow the instructions
2) install sleepwatcher from http://www.bernhard-baehr.de/sleepwatcher_2.0.5.dmg (bot packages in the dmg) and reboot
3) open up the Script Editor, and copy this script to it:
tell application “System Preferences”
activate
delay 1
set current pane to pane “com.apple.preference.trackpad”
end tell
tell application “System Events”
tell process “System Preferences”
if value of checkbox “Clicking” of group 1 of window “Trackpad” is 1 then
click checkbox “Clicking” of group 1 of window “Trackpad”
end if
click checkbox “Clicking” of group 1 of window “Trackpad”
click checkbox “Dragging” of group 1 of window “Trackpad”
end tell
end tell
tell application “System Preferences”
quit
end tell
save it somewhere
4) open in an editor /etc/rc.wakeup, and insert this line to it:
osascript /path/to/your/script.script
5) reboot
probably now the trackpad’s tap function will work after the computer wakes up.
I’ve got this working, but one problem I have now is that when I plug in a USB mouse it seems to jump all over the screen. I’ve disabled the 2 finger scrolling under the trackpad options but it’s still happening.
Anyone else had this and been able to fix it? If it can’t be fixed does anyone know how I can uninstall the two finger scrolling without having to reinstall everything again?
Have you checked the sensitivity in the mouse preference screen under “Keyboard & Mouse” I’m currently using a wireless mouse so I know there isnt a problem with it or if there is it can be fixed.
Yes the sensitivity is fine so I know it’s not that. It’s only started happening since I installed the two finger scrolling. Also the tap to click is really annoying as when I’m typing if I accidentally hit the trackpad my cursor moves some place else
Also another thing is that my laptop now never seems to shut down properly – I always get the “please hold down your power button” error.
Is there anything else I can try to resolve these issues?
Anyway you can update the settings pic for SmartScroll since the version out is newer then the version you have settings listed for?
Also am I to understand that I’m to never ever open the FFScroll Preferences pane thru system prefs, or it will reset values? And if that’s true, and I like an idiot did (hypothetically speaking of course.. cough cough..) What do I need to do to reset them?
I’ve updated the pic
To get them back I would say repeat the ALPS glidepad step.
Is there any way to calibrate this? It keeps jumping all over. It’s manageable, but sometimes next to impossible to double click something because it’s moving all over!
What do you mean by moving all over? Have you followed the settings in the pictures I’ve provided?
Yes, I’ve followed all your steps and looked at the settings in your pictures.
“Moving all over” probably isn’t a good description of what it’s doing, so I’ll try again! Imagine you’re trying to double click and open a folder. The first click selects the file, but the second click doesn’t do anything because the cursor moved a little bit.
I remember back in the day when I was using XP, there was a check box in the control panel to “increase cursor accuracy” and if it was unchecked, it would act just like this.
I would really like to help but I don’t seem to have that problem nor have I heard of others who have had it.
I would say attempt the steps again and see if it helps.
Tried it again and I still have the same problem. Ah well, I’ll give it another shot sometime in the future.
Btw, thanks for the quick replies!
Sorry I couldn’t be more help. I hope you find a solution!
ApplePS2controller.kext refuses to install with the kexthelper. What should I do?
What do you mean by this? Restart or re-enter your password.
After doing this, the interrogation key stopped to work… Any sugestions (interrogation)
I’ve read about this happening to come people with different keymaps. What keymap are you using?
Brazillian ABNT2
Genaro Bonilla: I’ve read about this happening to come people with different keymaps. What keymap are you using?
I think the only way to get it is to remap your keys, you can do this by using this program.
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=Ukelele
The most weird is that this layout work 100% without FFScroll.
Genaro…
One thing I noticed is that you pointer almost don’t move while you’re using the two-finger scrolling. Mine isn’t that precise, my pointer always move and reach the top or bottom border of the browser… I think it’s problem of configuration. If you have time could you make a guide of smartscroll/ffscroll configuration?
Thanks for all…
On FFScroll configuration, two-finger tab and “Filtering for two-finger detection” what numbers do you use there? I think this is the secret for two-finger work properly…
Fernando it’s important to read the guides carefully “It’s important not to open the FFscroll Preference Pane because it will overwrite the plist and the values will be thrown off.” in addition to this do you have smartscroll? If you do please use the pictures to configure your smartscroll as such.
Sorry, I’ll be more careful now. I thought I can’t open ffscroll pref pane during the instalation process…
Hi Genaro… Let me ask you a question:
Inside my “StartupItems” folder I have 2 folders “FFScroll” and “FFScrollDaemon”.
Is it right? Or it just have to contain one folder?
Thanks
You should have both.
Predator29::
Your script isn’t working for me… When I click save I got an error message (something about sintax). Can you help me with this?
I did it…I made some changes on the predator’s script and now I got it working.
However…. the script is only running when I turn on / restart my computer, not when I wakeup from sleep… :/..
It would be nice if I had predator’s email/msn to ask him what to do…
Anyone here have his email or msn?
Thanks
Genaro… is this could be consequence of the dsdt from the sleep solution thread?
Sorry if I’m bothering you so much…
Thanks.
It shouldn’t be a result of the dsdt.aml seeing as though it doesn’t really affect sleep and unfortunately I don’t have his msn.
You should use VoodooPS2Controller from Voodoo Team.
It supports two-finger scrolling, drag etc. natively.
my keyboard and mouse pad not working after this instruction how to restore or fix that
NB/ i m not finishing the instruction because after the reboot his doesn’t work please hlp
hey, i just got two finger scrolling to work on my hackintosh. the problem i have is that the scrolling part is really hard because you have to have your fingers in a certain position all the time. is there a way to remove this two finger scrolling?
Hey Genaro,
My scrolling is more hit and miss. If it does scroll it scrolls very randomly. Is there way where i can tweak this? It feels like it doesn’t recognize the two fingers properly. Thanks!
Man, you are my personal Jesus!. Works like a charm!. Now i can have a so-near-experience-to-my-MBP, on my Inspiron!.
The guide is just perfect. If you have a 1525, and follow CAREFULLY all the steps, works like in the vid.
I tried the script of predator29 but it do not work. Also, now even if i restart, it does not work. I have to tap many times randomly and then it clicks. Sleep is working by following Thomas’s advice of following step7 @ http://www.dailyblogged.com/1348/os-x-10-5-8-installation-guide/
Any clue !
Hey thanks for the guide. I have an inspiron 1501. Thought I would try your guide. I can two finger scroll but when I scroll up it makes the page go down and when I scroll up with my fingers it makes the back mover down. It is like an opposite effect. Aren’t I supposed to hold one finger down while moving the other up or down??
Thanks in advance.
How would I uninstall everything and start again?
Whenever I try to click on “Trackpad” in System Preferences, I get the message, “Could not load Trackpad preference pane.”
Any idea how I can fix this? Sorry if it’s just some stupid mistake.
Works for me!!! thank you!!
I have a Dell Vostro 1720.