(Most other traditional programs – Chrome, say – display full-size scroll bars all the time.) Microsoft keeps mucking around with those scroll bars in inconsistent ways. The setting in Ease of Access / Display doesn’t change the way scroll bars behave in Office programs.

The Settings window looks like this when the option is turned off.Įase of access! Sure! That’s where you’d expect it, right? What was that about exceptions? I’m glad there are no small children within six feet at those times. I frequently miss important options because I don’t realize part of a window is out of sight. You have to squint to realize that the window scrolls at all. This is what the Settings window looks like with a shrunken scroll bar.

It only expands to full-size when your mouse hovers over it for a second. In Windows system dialogs (e.g., the Start menu and Settings window), and in modern programs (called “Store Apps” by Microsoft, with its usual gift for catchy names), the scroll bar disappears completely when the program does not have the focus, and shrinks to a thread when you’re working in the program but not scrolling. Scroll bars will then always be full-size in many (but not all) places. Go to Settings / Ease of Access / Display and turn off Automatically hide scroll bars in Windows. How to make the scroll bar full-size all the time (except for the exceptions) Go back to reading about the pandemic, see if that makes you feel better. If auto-hide scroll bars don’t bother you, fine, no problem, this is a bit of an OCD thing. So you stab at it and click, except while you were moving the scroll bar expanded and your click goes somewhere completely different than you intended, so each day you start drinking earlier in the afternoon and before long you’re pushing small children down when no one is looking. You’re working in a program and you need to scroll down, so you scoot the mouse to the right side of the window, but the scroll bar is this thin line, barely visible, a thread. Have you noticed that scroll bars in Windows 10 get squeezed to a thread or disappear? It’s one of those small annoyances that the authorities slip into our lives to keep us on edge so we can’t concentrate but we’re not sure why.

Windows 10 auto scrolling