How to fix the scrollbars in Mac

Question

Recently the scroll bars in all my applications on mac are growing larger when I hover over them and then covering the last item in lists (like Finder). Does anyone know how to turn this option off or in general if apple were to ever read this know of a better way to do this?

I think I would rather there be space at the bottom of the list for the scroll bar than for the scroll bar to covered the row (it can still remain hidden until necessary).

Answer 1

In System Preferences » General you can select Show scroll bars: Always. If you select that, applicable scrollbars are always displayed in their dedicated area, and don't resize when the pointer hovers over them.

Answer 2

It's one of the new features in Mountain Lion:

Improved scroll bars

Scroll bars in Mountain Lion expand when you hover the cursor over them, so it’s easier to scroll a web page or document.

I tried searching for hidden preferences for disabling it, but didn't find anything.

for f in $(mdfind kMDItemContentType==public.unix-executable -onlyin /System/Library/); do strings "$f" 2> /dev/null | grep -E '^[[:alnum:]_.-]{10,80}$' | grep -i scroll | sort -u | sed "s/^/${f##*/} /g"; done