How to turn swipe back and forward on or off on a Mac

A two finger swipe goes back a page in browsers, sometimes when you only meant to scroll. How to change the gesture, use three fingers, or stop it in Chrome.

Guide · Updated 22 October 2026

How do I change swipe between pages?

  1. Open System Settings, Trackpad, More Gestures.
  2. Find Swipe between pages and choose: Scroll Left or Right with Two Fingers, Swipe with Three Fingers, Swipe with Two or Three Fingers, or turn it off.

Three fingers stops sideways scrolling going back by accident, while keeping the gesture.

What about a Magic Mouse?

System Settings, Mouse, More Gestures, Swipe between pages: Scroll Left or Right with One Finger, or off.

How do I stop it in Chrome only?

Chrome reads its own copy of the setting. This turns the swipe off for Chrome and leaves Safari alone; quit and reopen Chrome after running it:

defaults write com.google.Chrome AppleEnableSwipeNavigateWithScrolls -bool false

Does this clash with switching desktops?

It can. If Swipe between full-screen applications also uses three fingers, choose four fingers for one of them. See three finger swipe not working.

Sideways scrolling: scroll horizontally. All gestures: trackpad gestures for windows.

Checked on 22 October 2026 on a MacBook Air (M1) running macOS 27.0.1: Swipe between pages and its choices were read from the Trackpad and Mouse panes, and the AppleEnableSwipeNavigateWithScrolls setting is present in the system.

Questions

How do I turn off swipe back on a Mac?

In System Settings, Trackpad, More Gestures, turn off Swipe between pages, or set it to three fingers.

How do I stop Chrome going back when I scroll sideways?

Run defaults write com.google.Chrome AppleEnableSwipeNavigateWithScrolls -bool false and reopen Chrome.

Can I swipe between pages with three fingers?

Yes. Choose Swipe with Three Fingers in Trackpad, More Gestures.

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