You’ve been there before. You boot up a game for the first time, click through the various engine and publisher screens, and end up at the main menu. And just like that, your ears are being bombarded with music and you have to quickly minimize the game into a flashing fog to turn down your system volume. Well, I have good news, because I’ve discovered an app that makes adjusting your volume a whole lot easier.
- Surprisingly useful
- Simple and foolproof
It’s called JustScroll and it does exactly what the name suggests. You simply use your mouse wheel to adjust the volume on your PC. It’s a simple, ingenious bit of kit and while not strictly necessary, it’s been a huge convenience for my gaming PC.
Surprisingly useful
You might not see a need for an app like JustScroll, and that’s likely because you have a physical way to control volume on your PC. Many Corsair keyboards, for example, have a volume wheel, while the HyperX Ally Rise has its own dedicated volume rocker . If you’re using a laptop like the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 , you may even have dedicated media controls.
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That’s not the case for me, and I suspect I’m not alone. I use a 75% keyboard without a volume wheel, and if you’re using something smaller like the Corsair K70 Pro Mini you have even fewer buttons to mess with. In any case, you can adjust your volume with a simple key combination, assuming you remember it — I forget all the time — and that you have keys that indicate where the volume adjustment is.
You can play around with it, or you can just scroll. There are two modes for JustScroll. To adjust your volume, you can either place your cursor on the Windows taskbar and start scrolling, or you can hold down the Windows key and scroll wherever your cursor is to adjust the volume. The latter mode is what I usually reach for, especially when I'm playing games.
That’s pretty much it. You can adjust how much the volume goes up or down with each click of the scroll wheel, and you can hold down the left mouse button for more precise volume adjustments, but there’s not much else to the app. Which works in its favor. JustScroll can be a buggy mess, but its simplicity makes it work exactly as advertised. In fact, it works so well that you might take it for granted.
Simple and foolproof
I was worried about using the Windows key, but JustScroll handles it flawlessly. Because it's a modifier key, Windows 11 only registers input when you release the Windows key. JustScroll takes advantage of that and sets a dummy hotkey of Windows key + Insert when you start scrolling with your mouse wheel. That means you’ll never minimize a game or open the Start menu when you use the Windows key to adjust the volume. That’s true regardless of how long you hold down the Windows key after you start or stop scrolling.
The other big advantage is granularity. When you use physical buttons to adjust volume, you don’t have much control over how big the jumps in volume are. In most cases, you have to get the volume in a general area and then adjust your game or video volume to get it exactly where you want it. With JustScroll, you can adjust your volume in increments of 2, giving you precise control over how loud your PC is.
I’ve been hesitant to write about JustScroll because it’s such a simple utility. But sometimes the most basic software is also the most useful, and JustScroll definitely falls into that camp. You can pick up the app, which looks like it was made by a solo developer, on Steam or Itch.io . Most of us are used to getting software for free these days, but $2 developer Eduard Georgiev asking for the tool is entirely justified.
