Enable Smooth Scrolling in Windows, IE, Chrome, Firefox, Opera

You may have noticed that whenever you scroll up or down any document or web page using the mouse, it gets scrolled 3 lines at a time. This is the default setting in Windows, as a result of which, when you scroll your Word documents or any web page in any browser, a single scroll wheel notch makes the page jump 3 lines.

Enable Smooth Scrolling

If you wish to changes this setting on your Windows system-wide, or in most major browsers like Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox and Opera – natively or by taking third-party tool help, you can do it as follows:

Windows 8

To change the scrolling settings system-wide on your Windows computer, open Control Panel > Mouse > Wheels tab. Here you can change the figure from 3, to 2 or even 1 if you wish. This will make any page or document to scroll 1 line at a time. If you change this setting, it would be changed system-wide, ie. for your documents as well as browsers.

This may not make the scrolling smoother, but because it is scrolled 1 line at a time, it gives you more control and appears to be smoother.

But if you wish to change it only for your web browsers, and keep the default Windows setting as it is, you can do the following in Internet Explorer, Chrome, Opera and Firefox.

Internet Explorer

Open Internet Options. Under Advanced, you will an option to Use Smooth scrolling, under theBrowsing section. Select the check box and click Apply. You can even use our Ultimate Windows Tweaker to change this setting in a click.

Chrome

Chrome used to offer a flag that let you enable smooth scrolling, but Google appears to have discontinued it. You can now use the Chromium Wheel Smooth Scroller add-on to achieve this.

Firefox

Firefox users can use the Yet Another Smooth Scrolling extension. It makes the mouse scrolling experience smoother and also support keyboard scrolling. It even lets you customize your smooth scrolling behavior, in terms of step size, smoothness and acceleration sensitivity.

Opera

Opera too like Chrome, offered a flag that let you enable smooth scrolling, but I could not find it now – I guess they too must have discontinued it. Classic Scroll add-on will offer you a smooth scrolling experience.  The Modern Scroll add-on will let you customize your scrolling experience.