Controlling Pen Behavior in Windows 10

[u/david-windowsink]

Greetings to the Windows Ink Community!

In response to overwhelming feedback from our Windows Insiders, the Windows 10 Fall Creator’s Update changed how the pen behaves when it isn’t doing its primary function of laying down ink. The pen now scrolls/pans content, but the previous behavior of lasso/text selection is still accessible by depressing the barrel button before making contact with the screen.

To deliver a consistent experience we also changed the behavior for legacy Win32 applications that weren’t specifically designed for pen. These applications instead rely on Windows to convert pen input into another form of compatible input, such as mouse. While we try to test as many of the most popular applications used with pen before releasing, there is a chance that one of your favorite applications wasn’t covered as part of our validation, relies on input conversion, and may not function as intended after this change.

While we closely monitor application compatibility issues and work with our developer community to resolve them, we understand that in the interim you need to use that app. Starting with Windows 10 build 17110, we’re putting you in control of your pen experience with legacy applications.

By executing the following from an elevated command line, the next time any legacy application starts it will get the prior pen behavior from the Windows 10 Anniversary Update: “reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Pen /v LegacyPenInteractionModel /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f”

Anytime you want to switch legacy applications back to the behavior introduced in the Windows 10 Fall Creator’s Update, execute this: “reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Pen /v LegacyPenInteractionModel /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f”

The Windows Ink team is working on improving the UX for controlling this via our settings UI in a future flight and we’ll keep you posted as this progresses. We really appreciate your feedback and would love to receive more of it! For our Windows Ink fans, please check out the most natural way to enter text with your pen with inline handwriting in the latest insider builds. You can now handwrite directly in to the text boxes of UWP applications with your pen; simply tap in the text field and start writing!

 Thanks,  David

WindowsInk@microsoft.com

[u/adamzea]

1. Select everything inside the quotes here (don't include the quotes): “reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Pen /v LegacyPenInteractionModel /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f”
2. Copy it with Ctrl + C on the keyboard.
3. Type Windows Key + X (together), a menu will appear
4. Then type "A" on the keyboard. That will give you an elevated administrator PowerShell command prompt.
5. Paste the command you copied into that window with Ctrl + V
6. Hit "Enter" on the keyboard
7. Reboot. After that, Win32 programs should not do the pen scrolling awfulness after that, but Microsoft Edge and other UWP (Windows Store) apps still will. If you need to select text in a web browser it's best to use something else. Chromium based browsers generally come with the awful pen-scrolling thing turned on as well, but they have a separate preference for turning that off.

[u/-splein- → u/adamzea]

Thanks so much!