Windows 10: Scroll bar cancelling position when mouse cursor gets too far away from the scrollbar area

So, I got really annoyed by how this has been working for tens of years and from my search it seems like Microsoft is also not giving this any attention, so here I am creating this post to start a conversation about this.The problem I am experiencing is; When dragging any scrollbar in any application and I slide too much off the scroll area, the scrollbar will reset to where it was before I started dragging. You can test it anywhere. This has however become really annoying because if you just lazily grab the bar a throw it all the way to the other end especially when working fast, your mouse

:)

 

Scroll bar cancelling position when mouse cursor gets too far away from the scrollbar area

are you sure? I am pretty sure the problem is an intended behaviour by Microsoft

Steps to reproduce:

1) use mouse cursor to grab a scrollbar (in a browser for example)

2) while still holding left mouse button, slide down

3) still holding left mouse button, slide to the side

4) scroll bar will jump to the previous position

Produced on PC

 

Scroll bar cancelling position when mouse cursor gets too far away from the scrollbar area

So, I got really annoyed by how this has been working for tens of years and from my search it seems like Microsoft is also not giving this any attention, so here I am creating this post to start a conversation about this.

The problem I am experiencing is; When dragging any scrollbar in any application and I slide too much off the scroll area, the scrollbar will reset to where it was before I started dragging. You can test it anywhere.

This has however become really annoying because if you just lazily grab the bar a throw it all the way to the other end (especially when working fast), your mouse movement is not precise enough and sometimes you overshoot or leave the buffer distance and it just resets back and you need to do it again.

From some search I found that this exists to give users way to "cancel accidental action" as discussed over here: Why do scrollbars revert to original scroll distance when mouse is dragged sideways too far?

which makes sense, however at this point this "feature" causes more pain than it prevents (I am not very often accidentally clicking on scrollbars and nothing would happen if I would). Maybe this feature should be an Accessibility feature only, in Accessibility part of the Windows Settings...for older people.

I and millions others, I guess, would be really glad to have Settings toggle for this feature, as I would love to disable it. Another solution would be to change the way it cancels with some key or a Right Click, as used in many graphical software to cancel actions, rather than a move-away solution.

Thanks. I hope we can find a solution.

- Tomas

 

Scroll bar cancelling position when mouse cursor gets too far away from the scrollbar area

Win11 Pro, Office 365 Word - no such issues with scroll bar

Excel - no such issues

But then this was tested on a desktop not Laptop