So currently I have:

#div { position: relative; height: 510px; overflow-y: scroll;
}

However I don't believe that it will be obvious to some users that there is more content there. They could scroll down the page without knowing that my div actually contains a lot more content. I use the height 510px so that it cuts off some text so on some pages it does look like that there is more content, but this doesn't work for all of them.

I am using a Mac, and in Chrome and Safari the vertical scroll bar will only show when the mouse is over the Div and you actively scroll. Is there a way to always have it displaying?

4

5 Answers

Just ran into this problem myself. OSx Lion hides scrollbars while not in use to make it seem more "slick", but at the same time the issue you addressed comes up: people sometimes cannot see whether a div has a scroll feature or not.

The fix: In your css include -

::-webkit-scrollbar { -webkit-appearance: none; width: 7px;
}
::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb { border-radius: 4px; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, .5); box-shadow: 0 0 1px rgba(255, 255, 255, .5);
}

/* always show scrollbars */
::-webkit-scrollbar { -webkit-appearance: none; width: 7px;
}
::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb { border-radius: 4px; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, .5); box-shadow: 0 0 1px rgba(255, 255, 255, .5);
}
/* css for demo */
#container { height: 4em; /* shorter than the child */ overflow-y: scroll; /* clip height to 4em and scroll to show the rest */
}
#child { height: 12em; /* taller than the parent to force scrolling */
}
/* === ignore stuff below, it's just to help with the visual. === */
#container { background-color: #ffc;
}
#child { margin: 30px; background-color: #eee; text-align: center;
}

<div> <div>Example</div>
</div>

customize the apperance as needed. Source

14

Please note on iPad Safari, NoviceCoding's solution won't work if you have -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch; somewhere in your CSS. The solution is either removing all the occurrences of -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch; or putting -webkit-overflow-scrolling: auto; with NoviceCoding's solution.

1

For anyone coming here in 2021 and later years:

"Custom scrollbars are no longer supported in iOS 14."

according to an official "Frameworks Engineer" on the developer.apple.com forums.

3

This will work with iPad on Safari on iOS 7.1.x from my testing, I'm not sure about iOS 6 though. However, it will not work on Firefox. There is a jQuery plugin which aims to be cross browser compliant called jScrollPane.

Also, there is a duplicate post here on Stack Overflow which has some other details.

2

This will make the scroll bars always display when there is content within windows that must be scrolled to access, it applies to all windows and all apps on the Mac:

Launch System Preferences from the  Apple menu Click on the “General” settings panel Look for ‘Show scroll bars’ and select the radiobox next to “Always” Close out of System Preferences when finished

1

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