Windows 10 Scrollbars

Since changing how I work, which means I am more reliant on my laptop’s own screen, I found that the vertical scroll bar was a bit narrow for my liking, and my mouse often wavered off it in use and accidentally clicked on something else.

To my surprise, in Windows 10, there is no control for the scroll bar width (at least not that I can find). In Windows 7, it was directly controlled by one of the Advanced screens in the control panel. I would have thought it would be a prime contender for an entry in Windows 10’s Ease of Access controls, but no.

So a bit of Googling, and the answer is to change it in Regedit. I think it is poor that the setting is not more accessible.

I now have ScrollHeight and ScrollWidth set to -400. This is totally over the top, but I like it. The default is -225, so I reckon -300 is probably a more subtle widening.

Note: not all programmes use the Windows settings unfortunately. Poor show, Slack!

One Comment

  1. chris
    August 14, 2019
    Reply

    In case the linked article ever disappears:

    1. Open Regedit.
    2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics
    3. Edit values of ScrollWidth (for scroll bar width) and ScrollHeight (for size of buttons at either end of the bar).
    4. Close Regedit, sign out of Windows and then sign back in again (or simply reboot)

    Enter a value between -120 (thinner) to -1500 (thicker). The article says the default is -255. Mine were already -225, I don’t know why that was so.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *