How to make that keyboard key that nobody uses count for something

If you want to give a second life to the Scroll Lock key on your laptop or desktop keyboard and customize it with more shortcuts, we show you some simple tricks to use with Windows 10. It is very likely that you have not stopped to think about what every key on your computer is for. Many have a long history, but their use has been reduced over time, and they have remained as decoration. This has happened to the Scroll Lock key, although we can give it a second life.

The Scroll Lock key was already on the keyboards of the first computers IBM launched in the 1980s. Since then, it has been on our keyboards until now it has disappeared from some computers, such as smaller laptops. If you still have this key on your Windows 10 computer, we will teach you different ways to use it.

In its beginnings, a scroll lock key in the laptop was used as its name indicates to scroll, something that we now do with the mouse wheel or with the fingers on the trackpad. Therefore, this key has been discontinued; although many tools can change this, we will explain what they are.

With the Microsoft Power Toys tool, we can give our keyboard more functions and reassign functions to the different keys that we have abandoned. With this trick, those with Windows 10 can use Scroll Lock to increase the music volume. Activate capitalization, suspend the computer, or update the web you are in in the browser.

Table of Contents

To achieve these changes, the process is straightforward. The first thing is to download Power Toys to your computer from this link. (PowerToysSetup-0.18.2-x64.msi)

With the Power Toys tool, select the Keyboard Manager section.
Then press the “Remap a key” button, which means Reassign key.
In the left column, we must indicate the key we want to rename and the function in charge in the right column.
By pressing Accept, the change would already be made.

If you try other features, you must go back in and delete the connection with the garbage symbol to continue the process.

Start a program with the Scroll Lock key

Another option we have to use Scroll Lock again is to use it to start a specific program. This process is much easier, and you don’t need to download any tools.