Disable back & forward gestures in Mac browsers

In MacOS you can swipe left or right to cause a browser’s web page to move forward and back (also known as “overscrolling”). It can be a useful trick, but can also prove to be annoying. I’m in the latter camp.

It can be turned off, but only from the command line.

So, open up Terminal and run the following command, depending on your browser of choice…

Chrome

defaults write com.google.Chrome AppleEnableSwipeNavigateWithScrolls -bool FALSE

FireFox

defaults write org.mozilla.firefox AppleEnableSwipeNavigateWithScrolls -bool FALSE

Safari

defaults write com.apple.Safari AppleEnableSwipeNavigateWithScrolls -bool FALSE

You’ll need to restart the browser for it to work so I’d recommend closing it before running the command, in case it gets in the way of it completing.