For ever and ever, Mac OS has not handled natural scrolling and switching between a mouse and a trackpad gracefully, or at least the way I want it. Without some kind of intervention, scrolling feels backwards on the opposite input mechanism. The "right" way to fix this is to use UnnaturalScrollWheels and never have to think about it. But, that doesn't help locked-down work machines.
I've used an applescript in a shortcut to fix this for a while but Tahoe broke it. After some debugging with Claude over lunch, here is the new one:
-- Open trackpad settings directly
open location "x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.Trackpad-Settings.extension"
tell application "System Events"
tell application process "System Settings"
-- Wait for window to be ready
repeat until window 1 exists
delay 0.1
end repeat
-- Wait for the tab group to exist
repeat until exists tab group 1 of group 1 of group 3 of splitter group 1 of group 1 of window 1
delay 0.1
end repeat
-- Click "Scroll & Zoom" tab (radio button 2)
click radio button 2 of tab group 1 of group 1 of group 3 of splitter group 1 of group 1 of window 1
delay 0.2
-- Click "Natural scrolling" checkbox
click checkbox "Natural scrolling" of group 1 of scroll area 1 of group 1 of group 3 of splitter group 1 of group 1 of window 1
delay 0.1
end tell
end tell
-- Quit System Settings
tell application "System Settings" to quit