Left Steam Deck Trackpad Works as a Scroll Wheel in Desktop Mode | Clockwise & Counterclockwise
I just learned how the left trackpad of the Steam Deck actually works and it's ingenious!
Written Tutorial
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coming soon!
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Summary
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I can't tell you how many times I've been reading through a website on the Steam Deck and have attempted to use the left trackpad to scroll up and down the page.
#steamdeck
You can see that swiping up and down the left trackpad does, in fact, scroll through pages like this.
Until yesterday, though, I avoided using it because of how inconsistent the gesture seemed. I thought it was weird that the feature would be so buggy this late in the game.
Then, I finally learned how it works.
Instead of swiping up and down the trackpad, though, you want to treat it like a scroll wheel.
When we do that, swiping the left Steam Deck trackpad in a clockwise direction will scroll down the page.
And when we swipe the trackpad in a counterclockwise direction, we can see it scrolling back up the page.
To be honest, I'm not a big fan of this type of gesture for the left trackpad here.
I would much rather see it have a momentum-based scrolling effect when I swipe up or down.
But when I learned about this function, they justified it by saying you can maintain your scroll direction without ever having to lift your thumb from the trackpad.
And sure, I can understand that slight benefit.
That just makes it so much less intuitive for the user.
At least in my eyes.
I will say that I'm stoked to learn about this feature, though. I've tried to use this left trackpad of the Steam Deck in Desktop Mode for scrolling so many times. And have given up each time and have resorted to just using the touchscreen itself.
And maybe that's another reason why they implemented the scroll wheel gesture here on the Steam Deck.
With the touchscreen already being there as an option. . .the scroll wheel is able to add something different.