Since getting a Surface Dial a couple of years ago I have to admit I haven’t had much use out of it. However recently I spent a little time setting the Dial up and now I found it externally useful.

The Surface Dial not only can control Windows you to set it up to work with any Windows application. I have set up my dial to control the timeline in Camtasia Studio so I can use it as a video scrubbing tool. I have set it up with Word for controlling the clipboard and scrolling through paragraphs. Plus I have set it up to control scrolling through the time line in my audio tools. You can set it up to control any application that has keyboard shortcuts.

In this video I show I used the Dial with Camtasia Studio for video editing and setting it up the Surface Dial with Microsoft Word.

In Settings go to Devices and select Wheel. You can then add an app e.g Word and add a set of tools.

Each app can have multiple tools, I created a clipbord set and a set for scrolling through words.

You can select which key combination the left, right and click keys emulate.

So when you run your application you can select from your custom options.

It works great for video editing tools, office apps and photo editing tools. So get your Dial out of the draw and put it to use!

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