natural scrolling
also: inverted scrolling, reverse scrolling
A scrolling direction where moving your fingers up on a touchpad scrolls the page up, mimicking the behavior of moving physical objects on a surface rather than moving a scrollbar.
Natural scrolling reverses the traditional scroll direction to match intuitive physical interactions. When you swipe your fingers upward on a touchpad, the page content moves upward (revealing content below), as if you're pushing the page itself rather than controlling a scrollbar thumb.
This contrasts with traditional scrolling, where swiping up moves the scrollbar down and reveals content below. Natural scrolling became popular on Apple devices and is now common on Linux desktops like GNOME and KDE.
You can typically toggle natural scrolling in your desktop environment's mouse/touchpad settings. For example, in GNOME: Settings → Mouse & Touchpad → Touchpad → Natural Scrolling. Some users prefer it for touchpad navigation, while others find traditional scrolling more intuitive when using external mice.