Terminal command to permanently increase scroll bar width?

[theorist9]

The scroll bars in Yosemite are quite a bit narrower than they were in Snow Leopard, which increases the effort and focus I need to exert to grab them with my mouse (a small effort yes, but it's repeated). [If one sets "Show scroll bars" to "Automatically..." or "When scrolling," one can get behavior in which they briefly become wider, but this is not useful to me because (a) it's transient and; and (b) I want mine set to always display (thus I have this set to "Always").]

So: Is there a Terminal command one could use to permanently increase the width of the scroll bars? Thanks!

 

[jbarley]

Just checked and my scroll-bar behavior is just the opposite of yours.
When set to "always show" they are just a bit wider then the other 2 settings.

The FireFox browser has an add-on that gives you the ability to change both the width and color of the scroll-bar.

 

[theorist9]

On the other two settings, I think you might be referring to the default behavior, in which you do indeed get a narrower bar with them. What I meant is that, by hovering your cursor over where the scroll bar would be, then clicking the up or down cursor, you can get it to temporarily show an extra-wide scrollbar on those settings (it's a bit tricky to activate, so it might not work the first time).

For Firefox, do you mean the "NewScrollBars" extension, or are you saying that Firefox has an extension of its own that does this?

 

[jbarley]

For Firefox, do you mean the "NewScrollBars" extension, or are you saying that Firefox has an extension of its own that does this?

Yes I was referring to the NewScrollBars add-on.

 

[theorist9]

Update: A 2014 post on macrumors (https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ll-arrows-back-in-lion.1228906/#post-19026350) indicates that, at least in Mavericks, you can add back the scroll arrows by modifying /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources/ArtFile.bin using a program called artFileTool, even though it was actually developed for Lion (https://github.com/alexzielenski/artFileTool).

So maybe (I'm just speculating here) the pixel width of the scroll bars is also specified in ArtFile.bin. If so, and if this tool still works in Yosemite, that might be how to accomplish this. I suppose I could try booting into one of my clones and playing with it there. That way if I screw up the system it doesn't matter. But given that the above is just a guess, it would be nice to hear from someone with expertise in this area what would actually work.