Tech for Luddites

I decided to post this tech tip after my father’s computer settings were somehow accidentally changed for the number of lines that would scroll when using the wheel on his mouse. It occurred to me that people might want to change the number of lines from the default even if they hadn’t accidentally changed it.

To deliberately change your scroll settings:

• Click the Windows button at the bottom left of your computer screen (or wherever it is if you’ve moved your taskbar).
• Start typing the word “mouse” until Change Your Mouse Settings appears in the search results. Then click that link.
• On the Mouse settings page, use the “Roll mouse wheel to scroll” dropdown to choose whether to scroll multiple lines or an entire screen when you roll the wheel.
• If you chose multiple lines, use the slider to select the specific number of lines you want to scroll at a time.

Note: This setting also applies if you use scrolling gestures on a laptop’s touchpad, but doesn’t affect how using a window’s scrollbar works.

There’s another scroll option on this page called “Scroll inactive windows when I hover over them.” I had no idea what this was for, so I did some searching and discovered that it’s something that didn’t exist before Windows 10 but that Macs had, so a lot of people who had switched to a Windows PC really wanted this feature.

In my case, I would rarely need this setting because I always keep all my windows fully maximized so I generally don’t have inactive windows showing on screen (an inactive window is any window that isn’t the one currently being used).

However, I discovered it actually helped when I was trying to decide how many lines I wanted to scroll at a time. I kept the Settings dialog box in focus with my browser behind it and as I moved the slider for the number of lines, I could just hover over the browser to test that setting.

You may also be interested in:

Windows 10: Change the Default Programs for Opening Files

Turn Off Unwanted Sounds in Windows 10

Take Screenshots of Your Computer and Mobile Devices