Keyboards, Mice, and Touchpads

Windows 11 provides basic configuration settings for internal and external keyboards, mice, and touchpads.

Keyboard

Virtually any hardware keyboard you connect to a Windows 11 PC via USB or Bluetooth will work automatically, as will built-in keyboards on laptops, of course. But your PC maker may include a software utility that lets you configure keyboard features that are unique to that device. And Windows 11 has a handful of keyboard-related settings as well.

Oddly, those settings are not found in the same place in the Settings app where you access options for other hardware devices like mice, touchpads, cameras, printers, scanners, and so on (in Bluetooth & devices). Instead, you have two places to check.

Configure text suggestions in Settings

First, open the Settings app and navigate to Time & language > Typing.

The following options are relevant.

Show text suggestions when typing on the physical keyboard. This option is set to Off by default—and is unavailable in some languages—presumably for privacy reasons. But this is a great option to enable: when you do, apps running in Windows 11 will give you suggestions as you type, as you see on mobile platforms.

To select a text suggestion, type UP ARROW and the RIGHT ARROW/LEFT ARROW as needed, and then ENTER.

Multilingual text suggestions. If you enable the option above and have configured Windows with support for multiple languages, you should also enable this feature, since it updates text suggestions to support whatever other languages you use.

The other options here, such as “Autocorrect misspelled words,” “Highlight misspelled words,” and so on, are all related to the Touch keyboard in Windows 11 that’s used on tablets and other touch-capable PCs. We discuss the Touch keyboard a bit in Tablet, Touch, and Pen.

Configure basic keyboard settings with the Control Panel

Though Windows 11 has moved most system settings from the legacy Control Panel to the Settings app, a few holdovers remain. And some basic keyboard settings are among them. Granted, it’s unlikely you will need to configure these settings differently.

But if you want to check just in case, the easiest way is to use Search”: just type keyboard and then select “Keyboard Properties – Control Panel” from the search results.

Here, you can configure the keyboard’s character repeat delay, character repeat rate, and cursor blink rate. Exciting, we know.

Mouse and touchpad

As you should expect, Windows works seamlessly with mice as well as other pointing devices like touchpads. For the most part, you can simply plug in an external pointing device and it will just work.

You manage mouse and touchpad settings by opening the Settings app and navigating to Bluetooth & devices, where you will find sections for Mouse and Touchpad.

In both cases, your PC or device maker will likely provide their own utilities that you can use to further configure the mouse or touchpad.

Configure a mouse

Mice are configured separately in Mouse settings, which you can find by opening the Settings app and navigating to Bluetooth & devices > Mouse.

The following options are available.

Primary mouse button. By default, the left mouse button is configured as the primary mouse button, but if you’re a leftie, you can use this option to change it to the right mouse button.

Mouse pointer speed. Using a slider, you can configure the speed of the mouse cursor in a range of values from 1 to 10. The default speed is 5.

Roll the mouse wheel to scroll. By default, this is set to “Multiple lines at a time,” but you can change it to “One screen at a time” if desired.

Lines to scroll at a time. Using a slider, you can configure the number of lines of text to scroll with each click of the mouse scroll wheel in a range of values from 1 to 100. The default is 3.

Scroll inactive windows when hovering over them. This neat feature is enabled by default.

Additional mouse settings. Select this option to open the legacy Mouse Properties control panel, which lets you configure other pointer options like configuring the mouse cursor scheme, displaying cursor trails, and more. Depending on the capabilities of your mouse, you may see other tabs here, too. (Some mice require a separate utility.)

Mouse pointer. Select this option to open Mouse pointer and touch settings, which provides basic mouse pointer style and size configuration.

Configure a touchpad

Laptops and other portable PCs usually include a built-in pointing device called a touchpad, which used to be called a trackpad. The name changed because modern versions now support multi-touch gestures. So, in addition to moving your finger across its surface to move the on-screen pointer (“track”), you can now use gestures (“touch”) to perform more sophisticated actions.

These devices are configured separately from mice in Touchpad settings, which you can find by opening the Settings app and navigating to Bluetooth & devices > Touchpad.

The following options are available.

Touchpad. Here, you can determine whether the touchpad is enabled and whether it should remain enabled if you connect a mouse.

Cursor speed. Using a slider, you can configure the speed of the mouse cursor in a range of values from 1 to 10. The default speed is 5.

Taps. This expands to reveal several options related to touchpad sensitivity and how Windows 11 responds when you tap the touchpad with one or two fingers.

Scroll & zoom. This expands to reveal two touchpad scrolling options and one zoom option, for pinch to zoom.

The “Scrolling direction” option is particularly interesting: if you’ve switched from a Mac and would like Windows 11 to scroll the way you’re used to, you can change this from “Down motion scrolls up” (the default) to “Down motion scrolls down.”

Three-finger gestures. Expand this to reveal options related to what happens when you tap or swipe the touchpad with three fingers.

If you experience a lot of touchpad mis-taps or mis-swipes, and don’t use touchpad gestures anyway, you should set “Taps” and “Swipes” to “Nothing.”

Four-finger gestures. Expand this to reveal options related to what happens when you tap or swipe the touchpad with four fingers.

As with three-finger gestures, if you experience a lot of touchpad mis-taps or mis-swipes, and don’t use touchpad gestures anyway, you should set “Taps” and “Swipes” to “Nothing.”

More touchpad settings. Select this option to open the legacy Mouse Properties control panel, which lets you configure other pointer options like switching the left and right buttons, configuring the mouse cursor scheme, displaying cursor trails, and more. Some PC makers add a tab for custom touchpad configuration, too. (Others use a separate utility.)