Why Scroll Lock is needed and how to make it useful

You've probably noticed that your keyboard has one button with an obscure purpose - Scroll Lock. Pressing it lights some kind of LED above the cursor keys, but otherwise does nothing. Why is it needed?

The Scroll Lock key has been present on keyboards since the very first IBM PC, released in 1981. Then there were no mice, and the cursor in the text moved with the keys. Scroll Lock changes scroll modes. When the Scroll Lock is off, you can move the cursor with the arrows, and when pressed, you can scroll the entire screen up, down, right and left.

Modern programs can themselves figure out when to move the cursor with the keys, and when to scroll the screen. Therefore, Scroll Lock is mostly idle. It can come in handy in Microsoft Excel, where it is used to scroll through tables with arrows, or in Linux, where it can pause the stream of text displayed in the console to make it easier to read.

Scroll Lock is so rarely used that it can be considered almost useless. However, it can still be used.

Download and install a free app from Microsoft called PowerToys. Open it in the system tray and find the Keyboard Manager section. Click the Remap Key button.

Click on the plus sign and select Scrol Lock from the first dropdown menu. Or click Type Key and press Scrol Lock on your keyboard. In the second drop-down menu, select the key or action you want to assign to the Scrol Lock button.

You can, for example, turn off or turn on the sound with more help, pause music, put the computer into sleep mode, or refresh the page in the browser. Then click OK and you're done.

Download Microsoft PowerToys →