The hidden Windows 11 trick I missed for years | Windows Central

Windows Help · 2025-11-05T21:09:51Z

"It's the little things that matter the most."

This isn't some deep and meaningful post that'll make you think about the meaning of existence. It's about changing the volume on your Windows 11 PC. But it's a little thing I do countless times every day, and I just found out about this insanely useful trick.

Did you know that you can change the volume on Windows 11 from the taskbar without clicking on anything? No click and slide, no need to use hardware controls on your keyboard, your headphones or your speakers.

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Just scroll

I just learned that you can scroll on the volume icon to adjust the volume on accident. from r/Windows11

As I discovered from the Reddit thread above, you can change the volume on Windows 11 simply by scrolling over the icon in the taskbar.

Obviously, I'm not the only person who didn't know this existed. Counting Reddit, there's at least three of us. I don't even care that Windows 11 25H2 is completely devoid of anything interesting anymore. This has made my day.

That's because it's a feature I will actually use a lot. I often switch keyboards, some I use have hardware dials, almost all have function keys, but it's one of those features I don't have any muscle memory for. So I end up scrambling, usually unnecessarily, to click and slide the volume slider.

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No longer, though!

What makes me feel even sillier for having only just discovered this, is that according to Microsoft's own Jen Gentleman (posting in the same thread) it was added way back in Windows 11 22H2.

And not once in all that time did I accidentally scroll over the volume icon and discover you can go up or down this way. What have I been doing?!

But it's also made me think a bit broader. What other little tricks are there hiding in plain sight in Windows 11? It's always little quality of life features like this I appreciate the most.

So I open the floor to you, the Windows Central reader. If you've got another extremely useful, but small feature like this, that you think those such as myself will have completely missed, drop it into the comments below!