If you are going to use your device with just one hand, one of the tweaks that you might have to consider is to thicken the scrollbars, be it vertical or horizontal or both. Their thickness are sufficient if you plan on using a stylus or if your nails are long enough to accurately tap on them. But if they aren’t this hack might just be for you.

Key to Modify

Whether you are planning to change the vertical (the one at the right) or the horizontal (the one at the bottom) scrollbar, the key to note is

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\GWE

When you enter this setting, there are 2 keys that you want to look out for, cyHScr and cxVScr. As can be seen from the scree shot below, there are also 2 other similar looking keys (cxHScr and cxVScr) which you will not be using.

cyHScr will change the horizontal (bottom) scroll bar.

cxVScr will change the vertical (right) scroll bar.

For your reference, the default values for both is 13.

Results

Depending on the value that you choose, your results may vary. Below are some screen shots with the cxVScr at default value of 13, value change to 20 and value changed to 15.

As you can see, if you choose a high value, you may cut down on the number of icons seen per row in the Programs folder from 3 to 2. A value of 15 is what I go with but you can choose anything you like.

What value did you use?

Tags: registry hack