Surface Dial

Surface Dial is a fresh new accessory that was launched alongside the Surface Studio back at the Microsoft Event in October last year. With simple presses and turns on the device, it optimizes your digital workflow bringing your most-used shortcuts and tools directly to your screen.

Consider it as a brand-new kind of peripheral that serves as a tool for the creative process, and offers a wide range of common utilities to an artist, student or a blogger etc.

Before we jump into connecting the Dial to any PC, laptop or tablet, you must make sure you are running the latest version of Windows 10 or the Anniversary Update build (14393.0 or above) and the device supports Bluetooth LE.

Pairing Surface Dial to your device.

  1. On your device, go to Settings > Devices > Bluetooth. Turn Bluetooth on.
  2. On your Surface Dial, pull the bottom to open the battery compartment and ensure there are two AAA batteries inside (batteries are included inside the box when you purchase Dial). Remove the battery tab.
  3. Press and hold the pairing button next to the batteries until the Bluetooth light flashes.
  4. On your device, select Surface Dial from the list of Bluetooth devices, then select Pair.
  5. If you are having trouble, check Settings > System > About to make sure you are running the latest version of Windows 10.

Once you’ve paired your Surface Dial with your device you’ll notice a new device listed called Wheel. Click it to get into Wheel Settings. This is where you can choose your default tools and settings for your Dial.

Wheel Settings for Surface Dial

Surface Dial work across apps like Groove Music, Windows Maps, Microsoft Word and Microsoft Edge. These include media controls (volume, mute/unmute, pause/play, next/previous), scroll, zoom, undo/redo, screen brightness, and Narrator.

Surface Dial works best with these apps : Mental Canvas Player, Microsoft Photos, Bluebeam Revu, Moho 12, Sketchable, Spotify, StaffPad, and Windows Maps. For a full list of apps, visit this page

If you are an app developer and interested in building custom app features for Surface Dial users, visit this link

Surface Dial is available for purchase at the Microsoft Store and other retailers for $99 USD.

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