How can I increase the cursor speed in terminal?

Question

How can I increase the cursor speed in terminal? I have Mac OS X by the way. It would also be interesting to know it for Linux.

I don't know what I should search for in Google (or what you like).

@Jon Pickup: Definitely not serverfault... Maybe [superuser](http://www.superuser.com/), though. — Cody Gray - on strike, Dec 20 '10 at 13:47
Assuming that you mean the blinking cursor speed in the terminal: For the El Capitan OS it is much easier to go to the '**System Preferences->Keyboard**' and just adjust '**Key Repeat**' and '**Delay Until Repeat**' scales. — Arsen, Jan 13 '16 at 08:17
@BillTheLizard this should be reopened: `software tools commonly used by programmers` — Qix - MONICA WAS MISTREATED, Nov 01 '16 at 19:29
@BilltheLizard You're joking right? The terminal is the best friend of a test suite programmer. How many programmers do you see using a graphical test suite? Because I have yet to see one that actually knows what they're doing use one. As it stands, the terminal is the single most important software tool for programmers. Anything you can compile with your fancy IDE's can be done on a terminal — SonarSoundProgramming, Oct 03 '17 at 19:41
@SonarSoundProgramming I don't think you understand the distinction between tools used by programmers and tools that pretty much *only* programmers use. Read the question. This isn't about programming. It's about increasing the cursor speed on the terminal. It's an OS feature question. — Bill the Lizard, Oct 03 '17 at 20:42
@BilltheLizard I'm not going to argue semantics, but those using the terminal are primarily using it for development purposes, save the few souls that just want to grab an apt package, or modify some OS features they don't like/agree with. That being said, I can use an IDE for editing text files if I so felt like it, just like others can run terminal commands if they feel like it. Doesn't mean it's primary purpose isn't development. That is the reason the terminal was invented. To develop and run programs. — SonarSoundProgramming, Oct 03 '17 at 22:13
@SonarSoundProgramming You understand that if you're just running a program you're not actually programming, right? — Bill the Lizard, Oct 04 '17 at 01:41
you can also increase the speed by changing the delay time to short in keyboard settings — vikas aggarwal, Jan 08 '18 at 04:00

score 421 · Answer 1 · edited Jan 29 '22 at 13:23

421

System Preferences => Keyboard => increase Key Repeat Rate

edited Jan 29 '22 at 13:23

alper

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answered Feb 22 '11 at 20:38

Piotr

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This one lets you do it within the bounds set by Apple. The Accepted Answer allows you more flexibility. – Andrew Feb 24 '13 at 19:18
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I increased the "Key Repeat Rate" and reduced the "Delay Until Repeat", it worked for me in terminal & all the editors also. – Swapnil Chincholkar Jul 31 '13 at 06:56
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This should be the accepted answer. – dsax7 May 23 '20 at 13:09
Yes, it worked for me and does not require a restart – Narayan Periwal Sep 12 '20 at 07:32
this should be the right answer – David H Aug 01 '21 at 08:12
This answer sucks and does not work. Cursor now hangs. – Stephan Kristyn Jan 28 '23 at 00:48

score 204 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 25 '21 at 05:21

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If by "cursor speed", you mean the repeat rate when holding down a key - then have a look here: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090823193018149

To summarize, open up a Terminal window and type the following command:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat -int 0

More detail from the article:

Everybody knows that you can get a pretty fast keyboard repeat rate by changing a slider on the Keyboard tab of the Keyboard & Mouse System Preferences panel. But you can make it even faster! In Terminal, run this command:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat -int 0

Then log out and log in again. The fastest setting obtainable via System Preferences is 2 (lower numbers are faster), so you may also want to try a value of 1 if 0 seems too fast. You can always visit the Keyboard & Mouse System Preferences panel to undo your changes.

You may find that a few applications don't handle extremely fast keyboard input very well, but most will do just fine with it.

Note: It requires a system restart

edited Aug 25 '21 at 05:21

Aniket Tiwari

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answered Dec 20 '10 at 13:35

John Pickup

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The link says to run this command in Terminal `defaults write NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat -int 0`. It says that 0 is the fastest setting, and that the fastest setting exposed through the official System Settings is 2. – DougW Mar 09 '13 at 22:47
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This links to an article that requires you to log in or something.. it would be more helpful to have the answer printed here! – wulftone May 09 '14 at 22:20
Also don't use the "InitialKeyRepeat" value as quoted in the link, start with 'defaults write NSGlobalDomain InitialKeyRepeat -int 20' This feature is controlled by the PressAndHold.app located in '/System/Library/Input Methods/' – MichaelStoner Oct 16 '14 at 10:00
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closed - but wanted to add that you have to restart your machine – cheshireoctopus Jan 23 '15 at 18:21
Be aware the changes may not take affect until you reboot (in my case) your computer. – Aziz Alto Mar 10 '15 at 03:59
This didn't work for me. Maybe because it's OSX 10.11? – daigorocub May 13 '16 at 10:13
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DOING THIS WILL MAKE YOUR VIM MOVEMENT EXTREMELY LAGGY !!!! – Thai Tran Jan 06 '17 at 01:19
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0 is so fast the cursor practically teleports to the new location. 1 is way more manageable. Thanks. – Kakaji Aug 28 '17 at 02:13
on my machine (10.14.2) 0 kills repeat. 1 does work and is indeed faster than the fastest preference setting – user3127882 Jan 17 '19 at 18:45
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It does need a restart, rather than a relog. Thanks – Youssef Moawad Jun 03 '19 at 11:16
it affected typing on Chrome. Made it laggy – om471987 Jan 27 '21 at 01:47
How can I revert this change, it's affecting my cursor behavior badly on different applications in MacOS – Basil Musa Oct 08 '21 at 13:23
bad answer, I cannot control it and the terminal is lag when typing... – chilin Oct 24 '22 at 00:11
use 1 , 0 is too fast and can not control – Pegasus Nov 16 '22 at 03:33
Just adding another redundant comment, that most of the people coming here need `1`, and not `0` in the given command! – Prasannjeet Singh Jan 30 '23 at 18:17
This did make the cursor stop moving at all. Now I have to press the arrow buttons a myriad of times to actually move the cursor. It's affecting many apps negatively. Beware! – Stephan Kristyn Feb 01 '23 at 23:40

How can I increase the cursor speed in terminal?

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