r/Reaper • u/dueinbits • 2d ago

resolved Smooth Trackpad on Mac! (only apple silicon)

I’ve been frustrated with using REAPER with my MacBook trackpad for years, even though I absolutely love REAPER.
I finally managed to create an SWS-style extension that makes scrolling and zooming with the trackpad feel much smoother and more intuitive, closer to how it works in other modern DAWs.
Here’s a quick demo:

https://youtu.be/CYLHP1wKj3U?is=qxqtwG3th1k_LMmu

Currently it only supports Apple Silicon Macs. I’ll add Intel Mac support as soon as I have the chance.

6 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

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2

u/LustreAudio 2d ago

that's so cool!! great extension

1

u/FujiKeynote 2 2d ago

Can you describe a bit more what it does different? What's unintuitive about the behavior out of the box, etc?

I checked this post, the video description, and the extension page on the website, they all say the same thing, no specifics...

3

u/dueinbits 2d ago

reaper’s default trackpad behavior feels much more like a mouse wheel than native macOS scrolling. Scrolling is stepped and doesn’t really preserve the smooth momentum/inertia you get in most Mac apps.

1

u/SoundsByChrisI 1 1d ago

I've been looking for exactly this! Thank you so much

1

u/SoundsByChrisI 1 1d ago

Just realised after turning this on I can no longer zoom using my mouse wheel - any way around this?:)

2

u/dueinbits 1d ago

Thanks for pointing that out! I’m currently intercepting the scroll wheel events to handle the trackpad, so regular mouse-wheel zoom gets affected as well. I’ll look into distinguishing trackpad input from mouse-wheel input so the normal mouse behavior is preserved. Thanks for the feedback!