Speed up the mouse in 10.1!

Darkshadow

Darkshadow

wandering shadow
Edit the file /Users/<b>your_username</b>/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist.

Scroll down till you find the line that says <xmp><key>com.apple.mouse.scaling</key></xmp>

Right under it is a number (probably set at 1.7) with a bunch of zeros after it. Change that number to up your speed! Be careful, I set mine to 5.2 and it's pretty zippy, so don't go crazy with the number.

To get it to start going fast (after you save that file, of course), either log out/in or open the mouse preferences in System Preferences. Don't touch any of the settings there! Just open it then quit System Prefs. You'll see your mouse jump up in speed. If you touch any of the prefs in mouse preferences, you'll have to re-edit the file.

This <i>should</i> be do-able using <font color="#0000ff">defaults</font>, but it seems it doesn't want to write the new number out so you'll have to edit the file by hand. Ah well, at least it works that way!

Heh, I found this out quite by accident too - I had changed that to 5.2 a loooong time ago when I tried to get the mouse faster in 10.0.1 and never set it back. Guess I never changed the options in the mouse prefs, either. I was thinking YES! The mouse is much quicker - until I opened up the mouse prefs and changed something. Then bam, back to the old slow mouse. But I remembered 'xactly what to change when I saw <i>that</i> one happen. ;)
 
Originally posted by Darkshadow
Edit the file /Users/<b>your_username</b>/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist.

Scroll down till you find the line that says <xmp><key>com.apple.mouse.scaling</key></xmp>

Right under it is a number (probably set at 1.7) with a bunch of zeros after it. Change that number to up your speed! Be careful, I set mine to 5.2 and it's pretty zippy, so don't go crazy with the number.

To get it to start going fast (after you save that file, of course), either log out/in or open the mouse preferences in System Preferences. Don't touch any of the settings there! Just open it then quit System Prefs. You'll see your mouse jump up in speed. If you touch any of the prefs in mouse preferences, you'll have to re-edit the file.

This <i>should</i> be do-able using <font color="#0000ff">defaults</font>, but it seems it doesn't want to write the new number out so you'll have to edit the file by hand. Ah well, at least it works that way!

Heh, I found this out quite by accident too - I had changed that to 5.2 a loooong time ago when I tried to get the mouse faster in 10.0.1 and never set it back. Guess I never changed the options in the mouse prefs, either. I was thinking YES! The mouse is much quicker - until I opened up the mouse prefs and changed something. Then bam, back to the old slow mouse. But I remembered 'xactly what to change when I saw <i>that</i> one happen. ;)
Click to expand...

Awesome!!! thanks so much for posting this. I have been wanting to up the mouse speed just a tish. Thanks man.
I know pwharf is going to love this one too. :)
 
I just did the modification and never saw any adjustment after opening mouse prefs and NOT touching anything then quitting. I only saw the change if I logged out then back in. This is with retail 10.1, not sure what you were doing it with, possibly the same but it only worked for me when logging out/in. Thanks for the tip.
 
Hmm...strange very strange. It works fine for me if I open up the moues prefs, close it (by choosing Show All at the top) then quitting System Prefs.

I knew logging out and back in would work at least. :p

I'm using the retail version too - I wanted/needed the Dev Tools CD as well, and today (Sunday) happens to be my b-day, so I had all that nice b-day cash from my family...;)

Worked out well :D
 
I can't find .GlobalPreferences.plist

Well I can if I search for invisible files in Sherlock but when I go to its folder I can't see it to open it. Do I have to change to root user?

Also when I finally get to it which one do I work on, the one in Users or the one System Wide? (/Volumes/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist)
 
Originally posted by osxe
I can't find .GlobalPreferences.plist

Well I can if I search for invisible files in Sherlock but when I go to its folder I can't see it to open it. Do I have to change to root user?

Also when I finally get to it which one do I work on, the one in Users or the one System Wide? (/Volumes/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist)
Click to expand...

Hi there,
In order to modify an invisible file you need to open a text editing app (textEdit.app or BBEdit work great) and choose "open" then type in this path:
/Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist
then press open and you'll be able to edit the mouse speed as described above by darkshadow.
By the way, sometimes you may need to do this to an invisible file which is saved as read only, in this situation you can only modify it if you are logged in as root. Let me know if you need instructions for this later.
Good Luck. Oh yeah, I have a 19" monitor running 1600x1200 at 75hz and i adjusted my setting to 3.00000000000 (not sure how many zeros there are. just make sure you dont delete any zeros or the decimal point.)
 
thank you very much! I set mine to 2.70000000000000 and it actually makes OS X feel faster :D I don't know why Apple didn't allow for faster mouse tracker in the System Prefs Control Panel.:confused:
 
Originally posted by osxe
thank you very much! I set mine to 2.70000000000000 and it actually makes OS X feel faster :D I don't know why Apple didn't allow for faster mouse tracker in the System Prefs Control Panel.:confused:
Click to expand...

I know what you mean. It makes everything feel better.
 
Is there any way to modify the rate of mouse acceleration (different from tracking speed) in any way?
 
Originally posted by ilo
Is there any way to modify the rate of mouse acceleration (different from tracking speed) in any way?
Click to expand...

Gonna need a little more clarification for this one. What aspect of mouse movement do you want to adjust? The tactic spoken of here adjusts the mouse's sensitivity which makes it move across the screen faster with less physical mouse movement. Very effective when working at a high resolution.
 
Originally posted by swizcore


Gonna need a little more clarification for this one. What aspect of mouse movement do you want to adjust? The tactic spoken of here adjusts the mouse's sensitivity which makes it move across the screen faster with less physical mouse movement. Very effective when working at a high resolution.
Click to expand...

What I mean is the rate of change in pointer movement distance according to the velocity of the physical mouse movement. In other words, you move the mouse quickly, the pointer moves a long distance. You move the mouse slowly, the pointer moves a shorter distance.
I've found that the default acceleration rate for Macs is very uncomfortable.. for instance, I tend to move the mouse a bit slowly when I perform drag operations. This in turn makes the pointer move a much shorter distance than I had expected. Whenever I try to trash an icon on the left side of the screen, I bump my hand into the keyboard halfway. (I'm left-handed.)

So there's acceleration for you. Is there any way to change the rate of acceleration, or the pattern? (I've heard somewhere that macs do not have a linear acceleration, but something like a quadratic form.)
 
Ok...I think I figured out how to get the <font color="#0000ff">defaults</font> command to work - here goes:

<font color="#0000ff">defaults write -globalDomain com.apple.mouse.scaling -float 5.2</font>

(replace 5.2 with whatever you want to set it to - I wouldn't go much over that because it makes the mouse <i>fly</i> across the screen)

Note that this is almost exactly what I tried before and it wouldn't change the number - it <i>looked</i> like it was, but reading it right afterwards showed it staying at 1.7. Just mentioning this in case it's just a fluke. :p

My earlier try was "Apple Global Domain" 'stead of -globalDomain in case anyone's interested. Everything else was the same.
 
Originally posted by ilo


What I mean is the rate of change in pointer movement distance according to the velocity of the physical mouse movement. In other words, you move the mouse quickly, the pointer moves a long distance. You move the mouse slowly, the pointer moves a shorter distance.
I've found that the default acceleration rate for Macs is very uncomfortable.. for instance, I tend to move the mouse a bit slowly when I perform drag operations. This in turn makes the pointer move a much shorter distance than I had expected. Whenever I try to trash an icon on the left side of the screen, I bump my hand into the keyboard halfway. (I'm left-handed.)

So there's acceleration for you. Is there any way to change the rate of acceleration, or the pattern? (I've heard somewhere that macs do not have a linear acceleration, but something like a quadratic form.)
Click to expand...

Now I gotcha. I agree that would be great, but sadly i know not of a way to do it. Any takers?
 
Funny, I've always found the akward acceleration curve on MS systems makes them incredibly annoying to use. Anyway I don't think that's easily adjustable (and in a perhaps selfish way I'm glad, since it's one of those little things that creates the "Mac feel").
 
non-USB PC mice suck because they have a sampling poll which locks up everything at interrupt. That's what you get when you try to adapt ports which were never intended to be used for input devices.
 
Thanks for the awesome tip!

One problem that I note is that it doesn't seem to work with my G3 FW Powerbook.

On my G4 everything works just fine...the Logitech mouseman wheel mouse runs across the screen in record time!

However, with my G3 laptop, I have a USB mouse (Inland) plugged in...but after manually changing the file then logging back in, I dont see any increase in mouse speed.

When I issue the default command, it doesn't work either.

They both successfully change the value of the scaling, but it doesn't reflect in the actualy mouse speeds.

I will try to restart and see if that will make a difference.

I tried openning and closing the mouse control panel, but it didn't do anything.
 
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