Wednesday, June 29, 2022 – Q&A: Are Chromebooks safer than Windows laptops? – Windows: Change the number of lines the mouse wheel will scroll

Windows: How to change the number of lines the mouse wheel will scroll

As you probably know, the mouse wheel is one of the handiest gizmos you can have on a Windows PC.

For example, if you move your mouse pointer over a link and press down on the wheel, the link will open in a new browser tab.

And if you roll the wheel forward or backward it will scroll the screen down or up, respectively.

By default, rolling the wheel will move the screen down or up three lines at a time. But you can easily change that default setting if you wish.

I prefer having the wheels on my mice to scroll ten lines at a time in order to move through the page faster, but I know a couple of folks who prefer to have it scroll just one line at a time for greater precision.

If you’re happy with your mouse wheel scrolling the page three lines at a time you can just leave it on the default setting.

However, if you’d like to have your pages scroll at a different rate you can easily make that happen by following the steps below for your version of Windows.

If your PC is running Windows 10:

1 – Right-click the Start button, then select Settings from the menu.

2 – Click Devices.

3 – In the left-hand pane, click Mouse.

4 – Click and drag the slider labeled “Choose how many lines to scroll each time” either left or right to decrease or increase the number of lines the wheel will scroll.

Note: You’ll be able to see the number lines while you’re dragging the slider.

5 – Close the Settings app.

If your PC is running Windows 11:

1 – Right-click the Start button, then select Settings from the menu.

2 – In the left-hand pane, click Bluetooth & devices.

3 – In the right-hand pane, scroll down and click Mouse.

4 – Click and drag the slider labeled “Lines to scroll at a time” either left or right to decrease or increase the number of lines the wheel will scroll.

Note: You’ll be able to see the number lines while you’re dragging the slider.

5 – Close the Settings app.

That’s all there is to it. From now on the page will scroll the number of lines you selected above when you roll the mouse wheel.

But wait, there’s more…

What if you’d like to have the mouse wheel scroll an entire screen every time you roll it? Well, you can do that too…

Just repeat the steps above but change the “Roll the mouse wheel to scroll” setting to One screen at a time when you get to step 4.