---
name: Scrubby slider
slug: scrubby-slider
category: interaction
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
definition: A numeric field whose label can be dragged sideways to change the
  value, giving a slider's feel without a slider taking up room.
aliases:
  - name: number scrubbing
    source: community
  - name: scrubby sliders
    source: photoshop
  - name: drag to change value
    source: community
  - name: sliding value
    source: figma
  - name: draggable number input
    source: community
tags:
  - dragging
  - pointer
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - knob
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso:
    - nudge
implementations: []
sources:
  - title: "CSS-Tricks: Number scrubbing"
    url: https://css-tricks.com/number-scrubbing/
  - title: "John Nack on Adobe: Scrubby sliders and more"
    url: https://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2009/02/scrubby_sliders_more.html
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: dragging a label to change the number beside it
---

Adobe shipped these as scrubby sliders and the name stuck: put the pointer on the little
word or icon beside a numeric field, drag sideways, and the number runs with you. Every
professional tool has some version now. Photoshop scrubs almost every field it has, After
Effects scrubs its property values, and Figma scrubs the labels in its inspector, which is
why a designer moving between them expects the gesture on any number they meet. What it
buys is real estate. A slider needs a track wide enough to be worth aiming at, and an
inspector panel with twenty numbers in it has room for none of them, so the label becomes
the track and the whole control costs nothing.

The value has to track the pointer continuously rather than in visible jumps, because the
feel is the entire point: this is coarse adjustment by hand, the same thing a slider is
for. Two refinements make it usable. Sensitivity should be a ratio rather than one unit
per pixel, so a value that runs to ten thousand is still reachable and a value from zero to
one is still controllable, and modifier keys should offer a second and third ratio, which
is the convention Adobe set (a modifier for finer, another for coarser). The other
refinement is what happens at the edges of the screen. A long scrub runs out of monitor, so
the serious implementations request pointer lock, hide the cursor, and accumulate raw
movement instead, which turns the gesture into something with no boundary at all. Pointer
capture is the cheaper half of that and the part you always need: without it the drag stops
the moment the pointer leaves the label.

None of this is discoverable, so the field has to say it. The reliable signal is the
cursor, which changes to the horizontal resize arrows when the pointer is over the label,
and the reliable rule is that the field still behaves like a field: a click puts a caret in
it and lets a person type an exact number, because scrubbing is for approximating and
typing is for knowing. Keep the two gestures on separate parts of the control, label for
dragging and box for typing, or a stray click during a scrub will select text you did not
mean to select.

The word sits between two neighbours on this site. A slider is the version with a
dedicated track, where the position of a thumb is the value and the control is legible
without being touched. Scrubbing means dragging along a media timeline, where the thing
being changed is playback position rather than a number in a field. And because a scrubby
slider is a drag with no keyboard equivalent of its own, the field it lives in owes one
anyway: arrow keys that nudge by the same step, so the value is reachable without the
gesture at all.