Smooth Key Scroll improves key-triggered scrolling in Google Chrome

There are three major ways to scroll web pages in web browsers. You can use the mouse-wheel for that, the keyboard, or, if you have a touch monitor, your hand to scroll in any of the directions available.

Both mouse and keyboard scrolling is not really that smooth in Google Chrome, with mouse-based scrolling smoother but still not as fluent as it can be.

Browser extensions like Chromium Wheel Smooth Scroller have been designed to make the process as fluent and smooth as it can be.

If you ever used the up or down key on the keyboard to scroll in Chrome, you know that it is a clunky process.

Smooth Key Scroll for Chrome review

The Google Chrome extension Smooth Key Scroll has been designed for users of the browser who prefer to use the keyboard to scroll web pages.

Once you have installed it in Chrome, it becomes available immediately on new web pages that you open in the Internet browser. You do need to reload old pages before it becomes available on them as well.

The first thing that you will notice that the key-based scrolling experience is a lot better than before. It is a fluent process that is not clunky at all anymore, provided that you are using the arrow keys to scroll and not other keys on the keyboard (e.g. page up or down) as they are not modified at all by the extension.

That's however no the only improvement that Smooth Key Scroll makes.  It adds two additional scroll modes to Chrome that use different speeds. If you hold down the Alt-key while using the up or down keys to scroll, Chrome will scroll four times the normal scroll distance. A tap on the Ctrl-key on the other hand slows it down to a fifth of the default scrolling speed.

Alt can be used to scroll quickly through pages, while Ctrl is used to scroll with pinpoint accuracy.

Even better: you can change all scrolling speeds in the preferences. If you prefer a faster default scrolling speed, you can make that modification here for example.

The developer of the extension suggests to enable gpu compositing and to disable gpu vsync at the same time to improve the scrolling experience even further.

Both options, available as Chrome flags, can be changed on the chrome://flags page.

But even if you do not do so, you will notice a significant improvement in the browser's scrolling behavior.

Verdict

If you use the keyboard to scroll in Google Chrome, and if you find the default scrolling behavior lacking, then you may want to try out Smooth Key Scroll as it can improve your experience in this regard.

Firefox users can check out Yet Another Smooth Scrolling add-on for the browser which offers similar features.

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