Github Gems: Mos

Whenever I'm looking for a particular software to help me do something, I always look to the most advertised and popular option that shows up in my Google search results first.

This often leads to me finding software that fits my needs entirely, but with a cost. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to pay for software that I think is truly outstanding. That I see the complete need for using everyday, is well reviewed, and well-worth supporting the developers and team that made it.

However, when I can, I like to find free alternatives as much as possible. Call me cheap, because it's true. I am quite frugal. This isn't always easy as some apps are very specialized and free versions are limited and just not as good. I think most people are like me in this sense, where of course, they're happy to pay if they need to but would love a free alternative.

Cue Github.

I feel like most people who aren't as tech-savvy or unfamiliar with Github, wouldn't be drawn to exploring what it has to offer. But boy, if that sounds like you, you are missing out on an entire world of hidden software and add-on gems!

Let me give y'all a lil bit of context.

One Saturday afternoon, the scroll on my mouse was acting wonky. I don't use an Apple Magic Mouse or Mac trackpad because I think those tools are far too expensive for what they are. They're the kind of things that would be nice and luxurious to have, but my regular ol' mouse is doing just fine for the job. Until it wasn't. A couple weeks ago, my scroll was acting super jumpy and not smooth. My scrolling experience had gone from acceptable to unbearable before I had time to notice any gradual degradation. Honestly, I still don't know what happened there. All I knew was that I had to fix the problem.

After trying all the hardware tricks (blowing the dust out, resetting, changing the battery), I looked for any software alternatives to help fix my problem. People everywhere seemed to have the same problem, but no tangible solutions stated. I was pointed in the direction of this application called SmoothScroll which made the mouse scroll an animated smooth scrolling motion rather than a block-y scroll. Even though that's not particularly what I wanted (I just wanted the mouse scroll not to be jumpy-it was scrolling a tiny bit up for every continuous scroll down I did), I tried it out.

I downloaded it, started using it, and was pleasantly surprised! This was working! Even though it didn't directly fix my problem, it solved it in a round-about way, and I wasn't seeing that crazy mouse jumpiness anymore. Then I saw it. 20 days left in trial. Ugh.

I knew this was likely a fairly simple thing to code, this smooth scrolling feature. Why did they have to mark it up like that? I looked online and people gave it rave reviews, but I wasn't convinced. That's when I saw another alternative, Smooze. Someone had posted it on Reddit, and I think it was the developer, so I thought Oh! Sweet! That will probably be free because it'll be less well-known. But then I saw the words trial again and continued on my search.

I don't know how I got there, but somewhere along my hunt, I was led to Github. People were linking Mos. I took a quick peak, and didn't understand a thing because it wasn't English, but from the comments, it looked like this could work. So I brew install'd that shiz and tested it out for myself.

OMG It was exactly what I was looking for! And they thought of everything! They even solved my problem of having to check and uncheck Reverse Direction everytime I plugged my mouse back in (which BetterTouchTool also does I believe).

I was in awe. Github strikes again.

The sheer awesomeness of open source software was enough to make me write this blog post. I just find it amazing that there are all of these people loving and rating SmoothScroll and Smooze who might not know that this amazingly created free alternative exists! Now perhaps I am being narrow minded, and those apps have something to offer that Mos doesn't, but nonetheless, this post is mostly about bringing awareness to the resources everyone has available to them through Github!

All it takes is going a little bit out of your comfort zone to figure out how to clone/get something onto your computer, and then it functions just like a normal app would. So this is like a PSA not to shy away from Github or other resource hubs that might not be familiar to you. You might be missing out on a whole world of software opportunities!

Regardless, I love Mos. You can open it on startup, choose exception applications you don't want smooth scrolling on, and even configure the step, speed, and duration on certain applications. Wow. Caldis, you have truly outdone yourself here. Open source too!? Round of applause, honestly. This made me that much more happy for contributing to this year's Hacktoberfest (which I was really, really proud of by the way heh, just wanted to share that.)

I think I've got my message across. Use Github. Support open source. Don't limit yourself.

With lots of love,

Jiana