In computer displays, filmmaking, television production, and other kinetic displays, scrolling is sliding text, images or video across a monitor or display, often vertically. "Scrolling", as such, does not change the layout of the text or pictures, but moves (pans or tilts) the user's view across what is apparently a larger image that is not wholly seen. A common special effect is to scroll credits, while leaving the background stationary. Scrolling may take place completely without user intervention (as in film credits), be triggered by operating a computer mouse or a kyepress and continue without further intervention until a further user action, or be entirely controlled by mouse movement and keypresses.

Scrolling may take place in discrete increments (perhaps one or a few lines of text at a time), or continuously (smooth scrolling). The computational resources required to move images and video smoothly are high; fewer resources are required to scroll text. Frame rate is the speed at which an entire image is redisplayed. It is related to scrolling in that changes to text and image position can only happen as often as the image can be redisplayed. When frame rate is a limiting factor, one smooth scrolling technique is to blur images during movement that would otherwise appear to "jump".