I'm using a Windows10 system.
I have a Tkinter canvas which has an image drawn on it. Is there any way to slow down mouse pointer speed when it is hovering over the canvas? I've checked out this link and this link but the answer seems unstable..
To be more specific, is it possible to slow down mouse pointer speed in plain Python/Tkinter?
On windows system you can use native SystemParametersInfo to change speed of the mouse pointer. It's possible to implement via ctype, which is part of Python's standard library (is it counts as a "plain" solution?).
Take a look at this snippet:
import ctypes
try:
import tkinter as tk
except ImportError:
import Tkinter as tk
def change_speed(speed=10):
# 1 - slow
# 10 - standard
# 20 - fast
set_mouse_speed = 113 # 0x0071 for SPI_SETMOUSESPEED
ctypes.windll.user32.SystemParametersInfoA(set_mouse_speed, 0, speed, 0)
def proper_close():
change_speed()
root.destroy()
root = tk.Tk()
root.protocol('WM_DELETE_WINDOW', proper_close)
tk.Button(root, text='Slow', command=lambda: change_speed(1)).pack(expand=True, fill='x')
tk.Button(root, text='Standard', command=change_speed).pack(expand=True, fill='x')
tk.Button(root, text='Fast', command=lambda: change_speed(20)).pack(expand=True, fill='x')
root.mainloop()
But what if that our "standard" speed isn't equal 10? No problem! Take a look at this snippet:
import ctypes
try:
import tkinter as tk
except ImportError:
import Tkinter as tk
def change_speed(speed):
# 1 - slow
# 10 - standard
# 20 - fast
set_mouse_speed = 113 # 0x0071 for SPI_SETMOUSESPEED
ctypes.windll.user32.SystemParametersInfoA(set_mouse_speed, 0, speed, 0)
def get_current_speed():
get_mouse_speed = 112 # 0x0070 for SPI_GETMOUSESPEED
speed = ctypes.c_int()
ctypes.windll.user32.SystemParametersInfoA(get_mouse_speed, 0, ctypes.byref(speed), 0)
return speed.value
def proper_close():
change_speed(standard_speed)
root.destroy()
root = tk.Tk()
root.protocol('WM_DELETE_WINDOW', proper_close)
root.minsize(width=640, height=480)
standard_speed = get_current_speed()
safe_zone = tk.LabelFrame(root, text='Safe Zone', bg='green')
slow_zone = tk.LabelFrame(root, text='Slow Zone', bg='red')
safe_zone.pack(side='left', expand=True, fill='both')
slow_zone.pack(side='left', expand=True, fill='both')
slow_zone.bind('<Enter>', lambda event: change_speed(1))
slow_zone.bind('<Leave>', lambda event: change_speed(standard_speed))
root.mainloop()
In other words - it's not a hard task at all. We are free at getting/setting mouse speed without crawling at registry and without rocket science computations!
More about SystemParametersInfo you can find on MSDN.
The answer is "yes", but there's risk. You could slow down or speed up the mouse by writing an algorithm to control position. This approach would be a kluge and prone to error most likely. This method would leverage the event_generate function of tkinter.
root.event_generate('<Motion>', warp=True, x=xptr, y=yptr)
where root is the root (or any tk) window, and xptr, yptr are screen coordinates that force the mouse cursor to a specific screen location.
The second option is also a kluge and prone to error, but it comes at greater risk. This method has to do with editing the Windows registry. The registry entries are easy enough to find: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse. But be warned: ANY CHANGES TO THESE REGISTRY ENTRIES EFFECT ALL PROGRAMS. You can read this MSDN article for some recommended settings. Use the python registry module to change registry entries. But be sure to apply good error handling and exit control for your program, because you need to restore anything you change in the registry back to what it was. And if your program crashes before it can reset the registry entries, well you have to reset them manually unless you write a program that will set them to some default values.
Good luck!
