When the touchpad is set to emulate a mouse scroll wheel while using a circular gesture, swiping clockwise is scroll down and swiping counter clockwise is scroll up. Of course, you can change this if you want:

Steam>Settings>Controller>Pair and Manage>Desktop Layout>Edit>Edit Layout>Trackpads>Left Trackpad Behaviour>[gear icon]>Invert Swipe Direction

Or just swap the “Clockwise Command” and the “Counter Clockwise Command” under Steam>Settings>Controller>Pair and Manage>Desktop Layout>Edit>Edit Layout>Trackpads>Left Trackpad Behaviour

But regardless of the fact that it can be changed, there must be some logic to why the Steam Deck touchpad behaves that way by default, right? Help me make sense of why some dev team at Valve decided that the default should be “clockwise=down” despite these other common scenarios in which “clockwise=up”.

  • SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    6·
    5 hours ago

    This feels like a joke, but…

    All three pictures in the right column go higher by going down the page/list, even the examples, themselves. It’s the exact same. Numerically (count) higher and down on the page.

  • BananaTrifleViolin@piefed.worldEnglish
    11·
    6 hours ago

    It’s intuitive to me - clockwise is forward, and if I’m looking at a list or reading a document then down is forward. If I roll a mouse-wheel down in my right hand it’s also moving clockwise relative to me sitting in the middle of my two hands and looking to my right. If I was left handed it’d be counter-clockwise I guess.

    I don’t see clockwise as the direction “up” I see it as forward/progress, and forward depends on where I’m going.

  • Sneezycat@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    36·
    8 hours ago

    When you turn clockwise, you move down when you’re on the right side.

    To scroll down, you move the slider on the right side downwards.

    Idk, it’s intuitive for me, but I guess that it’s like inverted controls on videogames. What’s comfortable for you depends on how your brain works.

    I think of it as a (the world’s ugliest) cogwheel.

      • f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        2·
        6 hours ago

        Makes sense. Let’s say you are standing with a tower directly in front of you. If you want to look at the top of the tower, you would tilt head back and step back to get a less acute angle. If you want to look at the base, you would step forward.

      • KoboldCoterie@pawb.socialEnglish
        5·
        7 hours ago

        It’s the difference of controlling the character (mouse down -> head tilts down) or controlling a camera attached to the character (mouse down -> camera moves down -> camera stays pointing towards the character’s viewpoint -> view angles upwards) to me.

      • SatyrSack@quokk.auOPEnglish
        1·
        4 hours ago

        The only problem that I have with that is when Y is inverted, but X is not. It’s simple to wrap my head around “up actually means down”, but to simultaneously have to think “left still means left” is confusing.

        • Sludgeyy@lemmy.world
          1·
          2 minutes ago

          In the image if you wanted to turn the character’s head to the left you point your fingers to the left.

          You’re not wrapping your head around it correctly

          “Up actually means down” is not what people that think with inverted Y-axis. It’s if I pull back the mouse/joystick it’s going to tilt the character’s eyes up.

          Image you are flying a plane and you have a single control stick in front of you.

          Which way do you move the stick to climb higher in the air?

          Which way do you move the stick to turn left?

    • SatyrSack@quokk.auOPEnglish
      2·
      4 hours ago

      That logic does make sense with the default layout of the left touchpad being used as the scroll wheel, considering that the element that is being scrolled (the screen) is on the right side of the element that is controlling the scrolling (the left touchpad). If someone were to swap the touchpads (so that the left controls the pointer and the right controls scrolling), they would probably also want to invert scroll direction if they want to follow that cogwheel logic.

    • RustySharp@programming.dev
      3·
      5 hours ago

      Ironically in your example, if there were icons on the right side of the cogwheel, as the page moves down the icons scroll up.

      Imagine a piece of paper. If you pull the paper down, you’ll be scrolling “up”.

      • Sneezycat@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        2·
        5 hours ago

        True, but at that point you’d have an inverted slider, and that’s outside the scope of my imagination :P

  • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    7 hours ago

    In other instances I’ve seen that use a knob to navigate menus, which is mostly car stereo systems, rotating the knob clockwise would always go down the menu and counter clockwise would always go up the menu. This actually seems to be an industry standard.

  • LaserTurboShark69@sh.itjust.works
    24·
    9 hours ago

    I think it’s a matter of perspective.

    In your time example, I see it as time going forward, not up. It’s progressing. When you scroll with the steam deck you’re “progressing” through files, which are normally organized in a descending, downward way.

    I had a coworker who would say “scroll up” or “scroll down” depending on if he wanted the document/content to move up or down.

    • Zorque@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      6 hours ago

      I had a coworker who would say “scroll up” or “scroll down” depending on if he wanted the document/content to move up or down.

      … is that not typical?

      • ViatorOmnium@piefed.socialEnglish
        4·
        5 hours ago

        I think he means that the coworker said “scroll up” to mean the virtual page moving up - I.e. when the viewport scrolls down.

    • Sludgeyy@lemmy.world
      3·
      7 hours ago

      I would say scroll down the page if I wanted to see more of the information on the bottom of the page.

      The scroll bar needs to move down

  • PonyOfWar@pawb.social
    12·
    9 hours ago

    Clockwise, to me, goes forward. The file explorer sorts from top to bottom by default. It makes perfect intuitive sense to me. You may say that volume and time go “up”, but it’s not like they’re literally moving in space in an upwards direction, are they? They increase.

    • yermaw@sh.itjust.works
      3·
      7 hours ago

      Its hard for me to verbalise, but its even shown in the OP pic where the volume goes up

      I

      II

      III

      IIII

      IIIII

      Its going down there and isnt being questioned at all, because top to bottom being “next” is pretty universally intuitive to us.

  • Hideakikarate@sh.itjust.works
    3·
    7 hours ago

    I always thought one side of the pad was inverse, sliding down to go up, while the other side was normal. I had no idea it worked in a circular way.

    • SatyrSack@quokk.auOPEnglish
      3·
      5 hours ago

      I have definitely seen similar confused comments saying “My touchpad is broken! It works correctly when touching the right side, but the left side always scrolls in opposite direction!” Then once it gets explained that it is using a circular gesture, it is immediately understood, and they might even end up preferring that.

  • netvor@lemmy.world
    3·
    7 hours ago

    the trick is that turning is by definition moving in all directions (in a 2d plane) at once

  • TwiddleTwaddle@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    4·
    8 hours ago

    Omg how did I not know I was supposed to be rotating to scroll? I thought scrolling was just suuuuper jankey because it never seems to do anything consistently when I swipe 🤦‍♂️

  • thisisbutaname@discuss.tchncs.de
    4·
    9 hours ago

    To me, clockwise = down would be the intuitive setting.

    I’m not saying that’s the “right” way for it to be, just a personal preference that either the devs share with me, or that the same devs believed most users would share.

    As for why I find that intuitive, it’s probably because I associate clockwise with “forward” and anti-clockwise with “backwards”. In this specific scenario, “forward” would become “further down”. I hope that makes some sense.