# "Ghost scrolling" after using touch screen scroll back **URL:** \ **Category:** Site Feedback\ **Created:** [December 12, 2025, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-scrolling-after-using-touch-screen-scroll-back/1025633 "2025-12-12T11:57:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Chelonaut](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9a140/32.png) [@Chelonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chelonaut)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2025, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-scrolling-after-using-touch-screen-scroll-back/1025633/1 "2025-12-12T11:57:05Z")
This typically happens when I follow a link to somewhere in a thread, like a search result. Then if I get curious about the context and use the touch screen to scroll the page back it does so, but after a few seconds it goes back 20 posts, and this repeats every few seconds until top of the page. It doesn’t happen if: I use keyboard or scroll bar I touch screen scroll forward Not even always when I touch screen scroll back. Scrolling past an advert often (but not always) seem to trigger it I’ve seen it in both firefox and chrome, with both my Samsung s10 and my Windows 10 laptop. Link to page where I first noticed it (searching for “nightmare alley”): > [@Movies you've seen recently (Part 2)](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288/3098): > > Nightmare Alley (1947). Remade in 2021 but I’m talking about the 1947 original. Tyrone Power plays Stan, a carnival huckster who, with his wife, learns the tricks of staging a fake mentalist act and they leave the carnival to perform on their own. As their reputation and skills grow, Stan decides to try one last big-time big-money hustle, which fails spectacularly. A good old-fashioned entertaining film noir. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2025, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-scrolling-after-using-touch-screen-scroll-back/1025633/2 "2025-12-12T12:43:11Z")
I’ve had that happen too. Oddly enough it happened a couple times last night. For me that’s on Edge on Win 11. I don’t know whether the feature is driven by Edge or by Discourse. The fact it’s exactly 20 posts per increment suggests, but doesn’t prove, it’s Discourse. I seem to trigger it by impatiently scrolling three or four finger sweeps up or down before it catches up. That seems to be the trigger that makes it think I’d like it to scroll continuously. Hint: I don’t. I’d like to know how to prevent this from occurring. More than that though, I’d like to know how to stop it once it has started. Quitting the browser, not just closing the tab, seems to be the only cure. IIRC page refresh just picks up auto-scrolling where it left off. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2025, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-scrolling-after-using-touch-screen-scroll-back/1025633/3 "2025-12-12T13:55:44Z")
It happens every time I have the reply window open on my iPad. The reply window is stationary but the thread behind it scrolls up. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2025, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-scrolling-after-using-touch-screen-scroll-back/1025633/4 "2025-12-12T14:54:59Z")
Good point. IME it seems to only occur when the reply window is open. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2025, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-scrolling-after-using-touch-screen-scroll-back/1025633/5 "2025-12-13T07:01:43Z")
I’ve been annoyed a few times by this recently, too. You can stop the scrolling by grabbing the scroller (?) with the mouse, but it resumes after you let go, even if you manually scrolled back. This was in Windows 11 using Chrome. It seemed to me to start when it had to reload new (well, older, but not yet loaded) posts, then just got caught in a loop of loading, jumping up, loading again and so on. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2025, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-scrolling-after-using-touch-screen-scroll-back/1025633/6 "2025-12-13T11:55:06Z")
Today for the first time I had it trigger when I did not have a reply window open. Edge on Win 11. Same basic scenario though: start manually scrolling upwards, get aways ahead of the screen response, and suddenly it jumps a couple hundred posts then auto-scrolls upwards in 20-post increments. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2025, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-scrolling-after-using-touch-screen-scroll-back/1025633/7 "2025-12-13T12:00:13Z")
> [@Chelonaut](#): > > I’ve seen it in both firefox and chrome, with both my Samsung s10 and my Windows 10 laptop. > > Link to page where I first noticed it (searching for “nightmare alley”): In that thread I find I can trigger it with certainty by scrolling upwards with the mouse wheel rather quick, until it briefly buffers, apparently loading content, and then gets stuck in a load-and-scroll loop. (Edit, somehow the thread link didn’t work after copying, it’s this one: [Movies you've seen recently (Part 2) - #3098 by wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-youve-seen-recently-part-2/1006288/3098)) ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2025, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-scrolling-after-using-touch-screen-scroll-back/1025633/8 "2025-12-13T12:05:51Z")
I have only seen the behavior in long (\>~1000 post) threads. I don’t know where the cut-off is or whether there is a hard cut-off on thread length. But if I was tasked to debug this I’d sure start my testing only among long threads. ---
**Author:** ![Chelonaut](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9a140/32.png) [@Chelonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chelonaut)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-scrolling-after-using-touch-screen-scroll-back/1025633/9 "2025-12-16T00:11:20Z")
Right now I had this happen by following a link, navigating back to SD, and not doing any scrolling myself. The page just started scrolling backwards. It happened in the very long general aviation thread, and was easy to reproduce. Link: > [@The Great Ongoing Aviation Thread (general and other)](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other/600499/9035): > > Non-paywalled source: [https://simpleflying.com/outrageous-jetblue-a320-avoids-mid-air-collision-us-tanker-curacao/](https://simpleflying.com/outrageous-jetblue-a320-avoids-mid-air-collision-us-tanker-curacao/) ---
**Author:** ![mnemosyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@mnemosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mnemosyne)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-scrolling-after-using-touch-screen-scroll-back/1025633/10 "2025-12-16T01:58:42Z")
I’ve been having this happen too, but I haven’t paid enough attention to details to describe it. I use my phone, an Android. I had a cracked screen protector and I at first thought it was sort of triggered ghost touches, but I’ve removed it and the issue still occasionally happens. I agree it’s something occurring on long threads. ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-scrolling-after-using-touch-screen-scroll-back/1025633/11 "2025-12-16T03:18:01Z")
“I never thought it’d happen to me!” I had read this thread but didn’t quite grok the phenomenon folks were talking about. Then, maybe 2 hours ago, the scrolling thing happened to me too. I thought “stuck mouse” but it’s on my phone so that doesn’t seem right. Weird shit, man. I blame Trump. ---
**Author:** ![Die\_Capacitrix](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/die_capacitrix/32/9_2.png) [@Die\_Capacitrix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Die_Capacitrix)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2025, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-scrolling-after-using-touch-screen-scroll-back/1025633/12 "2025-12-27T16:06:21Z")
I’ve been seeing something similar on my iPad (Chrome) and now I just saw it on the desktop as well. Also with Chrome. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2025, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-scrolling-after-using-touch-screen-scroll-back/1025633/13 "2025-12-28T23:33:25Z")
I have had this happen to me for the past couple of days. I do think it’s triggered by something, some click or key press combo that I accidentally hit, but it could also be predicated on utterly nothing. It’s unclear. I’m on Win11, Waterfox. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2025, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-scrolling-after-using-touch-screen-scroll-back/1025633/14 "2025-12-28T23:56:22Z")
I’m seeing this more and more. It seems to be triggered by fast backwards scrolling in order to get to an old post. The screen flickers back and forth in just the way described. It also appears (not 100% sure about this) that some of the posts being flickered are hundreds of posts back in the thread, way earlier than where I had scrolled to. Clicking the “Back” button resolves the problem. ---
**Author:** ![dirtball](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dirtball/32/18772_2.png) [@dirtball](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dirtball)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2025, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-scrolling-after-using-touch-screen-scroll-back/1025633/15 "2025-12-29T00:34:38Z")
I see a little bit of the “runaway back-scrolling” from time to time. Most of what I see is on my Android phone with Firefox. When I go away from a page, like to click a link or switch over to a different app, or even if I hit the power button to blank out the screen, it’ll jump back several posts when I come back to the same thread. It usually goes back about twenty posts, as noted above, although overall, it seems there’s some variation in how far it goes. I’ve found that I can go to Settings (again, this is on the phone) and do a force stop for Firefox, and then it’ll behave itself. For a while. Maybe until the next day, or a few hours, or whatever, and then it does it again. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2025, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-scrolling-after-using-touch-screen-scroll-back/1025633/16 "2025-12-29T01:51:14Z")
That’s a totally different scenario than what most are describing. ---
**Author:** ![dirtball](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dirtball/32/18772_2.png) [@dirtball](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dirtball)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2025, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-scrolling-after-using-touch-screen-scroll-back/1025633/17 "2025-12-29T02:18:41Z")
I’m not so sure I’d assume it’s _totally_ different. You have the unwanted movement back upthead, and what I’m talking about started (for me) just a couple of days before this thread started. It could be the same bug manifesting itself differently depending on variables that aren’t evident to us. Or it could be something totally different that, by coincidence, just happened to start at about the same time. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2025, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-scrolling-after-using-touch-screen-scroll-back/1025633/18 "2025-12-29T02:20:04Z")
Good point. ---
**Author:** ![Chelonaut](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9a140/32.png) [@Chelonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chelonaut)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2025, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-scrolling-after-using-touch-screen-scroll-back/1025633/19 "2025-12-29T14:50:20Z")
There’s a thread on the Discourse support forum about unprompted scrolling when the reply window is open. This has been mentioned in one of the posts ITT, and I have seen it myself. Latest post is 21d old and reports the problem gone after a “rebuild”. I can’t provoke the unprompted scrolling with the link in the GA thread, and it used to be a surefire way. Maybe the issue is truly fixed. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2026, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-scrolling-after-using-touch-screen-scroll-back/1025633/20 "2026-01-06T23:47:51Z")
The ghost scrolling is getting worse. It’s jumping backwards about 20 posts. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-scrolling-after-using-touch-screen-scroll-back/1025633.md?page=2)