How to Disable Smooth Scrolling in Google Chrome (Flags)

The Animated Delay

Google Chrome is designed to make web browsing feel fluid and modern. By default, it enables a feature called “Smooth Scrolling.” When you roll the physical scroll wheel on your mouse, or press the Page Down key, Chrome does not instantly jump down the webpage. Instead, it calculates an artificial animation curve and “glides” the page down to its destination. While this looks visually pleasing, the animation takes roughly 200 milliseconds to complete. If you are rapidly skimming a massive document or trying to read code quickly, this forced animation feels incredibly sluggish and unresponsive. You must force the browser to jump instantly.

How to Turn Off Smooth Scrolling via Flags

Because Google removed this setting from the standard user menu, you must permanently disable the animation engine via the hidden developer flags.

1. Open the Google Chrome desktop browser.
2. Click in the main address bar at the top of the screen.
3. Type exactly: chrome://flags and press Enter.
4. At the top of the Experiments page, you will see a search box labeled “Search flags.”
5. Type Smooth Scrolling into that search box.
6. The “Smooth Scrolling” experiment will appear highlighted in yellow.
7. Click the drop-down menu next to it (which is likely set to “Default”) and change it to Disabled.
8. A blue Relaunch button will appear at the bottom right corner of the screen. Click it to restart the browser.

Instant Navigation

The change takes effect the moment Chrome reopens. The browser will completely bypass the animation rendering engine. When you flick your mouse scroll wheel, the webpage will instantly snap down to the new position with zero delay. This provides a raw, highly responsive reading experience that feels significantly faster on a desktop computer.