How to disable middle mouse button scrolling in Chrome

I have always used the middle mouse button in browsers to open links in a new tab. It is a comfortable option and way better in my opinion than having to right-click and select the option to do so from the menu or hold down Shift and left-click to do the same.

Sometimes when I middle-click in Google Chrome or other Chromium-based browsers, I get a scroll icon instead which allows me to scroll the page while moving up and down.

The feature is called automatic scrolling and while it does not happen when you middle-click on links, it happens when you middle-click anywhere else on the page.

Depending on how you use the browser, this may happen a lot to you, only occasionally or never. I run into the issue from time to time and while it does not take long to resolve it -- all you need to do is left-click -- it can be frustrating.

Google Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers don't offer a setting to turn that feature off.

Good news is that there is an add-on for the browser that takes care of that. While lightweight, it requires permissions to run on all sites you visit.

No Smooth Scrolling does only one thing: disable auto-scrolling in browsers based on Chromium. After you have installed the extension in the browser you need to restart it. This is not mentioned on the extension page on the Chrome Web Store but the extension won't work unless you restart the browser first. You will also notice that it won't work on internal pages and I read in the comments that it won't work on app pages as well.

So how are other browsers handling this? Firefox users can enable or disable the feature in the options. A tap on the Alt-key and the selection of Tools > Options opens the window. Here you need to switch to Advanced > General where the "use autoscrolling" option is listed.

Internet Explorer has the feature enabled by default and there is no option in the browser to turn it off.  If you are using a touchpad, you may be able to disable auto-scroll in the mouse properties but if you don't, there does not seem to be a way to do so.