This worked on the second try. On my second attempt I made sure I closed the terminal before restarting the machine. I initially changed the setting to 9.0 and found I needed a little more. Reset for third time up to 15.0. Since I am new to Mac (1 week) I was getting frustrated with not being able to move the magic mouse from top to bottom of the display with one motion, without resetting my hand. I found the universal Logitech mouse did just fine, but lacked the other the features that the Magic Mouse comes with. This worked so well that I don't even have it on the fastest setting -MacBook Pro Catalina v10.15.4
This worked for me too, so the speed is nice, but I still see a small delay in mouse-sensitivity. Is there another command and setting for that?
Thanks.
I'm not sure sorry. Maybe just try again and check you're inputting the commands correctly. I've also now started using Better Touch Tool to modify the mouse speed instead.
It's amazing how even after such a long time, this post is still useful! I just tried it on macOS Ventura, and it worked beautifully. I was starting to get disappointed with the speed of the Magic Mouse, but this solved all my headaches! I'm going to share this link with every Mac user I see complaining about the Magic Mouse!
This works great for the speed. But I notice as I slow down to select a letter or word, my magic mouse slows down even more. It's like there's a feature to decelerate the mouse. Is there any way to turn this off?
Many thanks, Paul! Since I switched from Asos to Macbook, its mouse speed was always driving me insane. Changing 3.0 to 15+ allows me to breathe easily now.
I have two 42" 4K @ 60Hz TVs attached to my Macbook Pro 2017. I ended turning it up to 15 to get a reasonable speed. So much better now, thank you. When are Apple going to realise they need to cater for ultra high resolution/large displays? They've only been making them as standard across a lot of their own products for about 10 years! I guess this kind of work around means they don't have to fix the OS. I know I'm going to have to dig this article out the next time I have to zap my PRAM! #applefacepalm
Thank you so much, this still works (Apr 2021)!! Set it to 20.0, quit terminal, apple->Restart..., then worked like a charm! I use a "Lenovo Thinkpad compact USB keyboard with trackpoint" with my MacBook, and mouse speed max is just not enough... I really love the feel of a super-fast trackpoint. Just like any IBM/Thinkpad fan would. Now I have a solution with MacOS! Cannot thank you enough... =)
Excellent advice, for me the original mouse tracking speed was too slow mainly when comparing with Windows machines. Now I've got a similar mouse response. Thanks a lot.
I found that after the restart the speed is improved, but if you go back into the Mouse section in System Preferences, and use the slider, then the speed reduces to what it was before: I think the slider can only reach the standard range. So I don't mess with the slider after doing your trick.
Probably redundant but I wanted to also say Thank You Paul. I first tried 5.0, but then tried your suggestion of 7.0 and it also seems perfect here. I closed Terminal and simply did a Restart as you suggested and all works great. Strange how there has to be this secret Scaling method, and Preferences-Mouse-Tracking Speed does not provide desired speed for most of us users. I feel lucky I searched Safari which took me to your site here. I have the new Mac mini and Magic Mouse and tracking speed is great now. You are saving my arm all day long. Thanks again!
Oh my gosh, THANK YOU! I'm so glad I found this, on 5K iMac at least 20 will do, I might increase it more, why Apple wants the magic mouse to be sooo slooooowwww???
This thing saved my **** life! I was about sell my magic mouse. Without this simply could not do anything. I'm on MB Air Early 2015 Mojave 10.14.6. And pretty afraid to update to Big Sur. Does anyone know if this still working on BS? Would be really appreciate!
Oh! Did not read earlear! Looks like there's a lot more people like me. And that works on BS. So, turning the question: do you need to make the process again when upgrading to BS? Thank you pretty much, Paul!
Totally does not work! MacBook mid 2014. macOS Catalina 10.15.4 I did everything people suggests. Closed terminal window with cmd-Q then restart or shut down and start my Mac, may be 7 times. Increased speed up to 70.0 No effect. Behavior of Logitech USB-mouse was affected )) but not of native Mac mouse :((( so sad. Logitech mouse has opposite setting for 'natural' scroll direction.
Thanks for the great tip. I was so disappointed with my Magic Mouse that I was ready to return it, until I found your page. It works great now! I am wondering if you have tried this with Mac's new Big Sur? I want to upgrade, but I'm afraid my mouse will go back to the way it was before. Thanks again for the great advice.
Hi Paul, I have tried twice now, but with no success. As per what Jeff wrote below, I made sure terminal was closed (second time around) and still no luck. I'm on 10.15.6 and trying to speed up Magic Mouse 2...
Phil
Hi Again; third time lucky... The only change I did this time was to shutdown, not restart after closing Terminal. Seemed to make the difference. All good now and thanks Paul.
Just found this and unfortunately this didn't work for me. The speed increased but when I closed the terminal and restarted the mac it went back to speed 3....
Just as I was beginning to regret my expensive magic mouse purchase, I tried this fix and it worked! Thank you thank you thank you!! I have a new MacBook Pro 2020. Tried 7 first, still a bit slow. Went through the process again and set the speed to 9 and it's perfect :)
It's working absolutely fine now. I have changed my speed to 20.0 and I am loving it. Thanks man for this trick, else, I would have disposed my apple Magic Mouse considering it to be dud.
Thank you so much! For nostalgia reasons, I just bought a new old stock Mighty Mouse and it was so slow that I started to regret my purchase. Your instructions saved my new mouse and now I love it even more. :)
Thanks a lot Paul. I wanted to use apple mouse again because I used to love it and then I started using Razer Death Adder and Magic Mouse's scrolling speed was way too slow for 4K monitor. This solution is exactly what I needed.
Hey Paul
Thanks for this tip I was beginning to think the magic mouse was a dud and would do what I want it to
Now its spot on after going straight for 15.0 from Jeff_farr comment below
Wow, thanks for the tip! Very quick and simple. I'm running 2014 MBP in Catalina and it worked like a charm first try. I didn't realize adjusting the settings in system preferences would completely reset after, so might have to tweak to find the sweet spot. Will save this command for future adjustments! Magic Mouse speed 6 :) Thank you!
For anyone that it didn't work with mine didn't either but I did the steps and on the third try it worked. I would recommend trying it three times before giving up!
After initially thinking this worked, I realized it might just be a placebo effect. I’m on Catalina on a 2018 Macbook Pro and I can’t really tell a noticeable difference between this setting being on 3.0 and say, 20.0. Which seems strange, unless 3.0 is around the maximum the trackpad can handle. Was that the case when you wrote the article (pre-Catalina) or was there a very noticeable jump in speed? (Also, yes I’m using a trackpad and replacing the word “mouse” with trackpad as another commenter suggested.)
Hm, I've been seeing mixed things. It seems to work for some people and not others which is odd. Just double-check you're following the steps correctly. Also, I did put this together a few years ago, so it's likely that it may not work on the newer system.
Hey Paul, I can not get it to work on my MacPro (end 2013) it runs macOS Mojave (v10.14.4) I followed all your steps multiple times.. When I restart my Mac the terminal still says that the mouse speed is now up to my setting (50.0) but the mouse is slow as on 3.0. Also the Terminal only applies the command when I close the application before the restart. When I check the system settings > mouse the slider for the cursor speed is not even on the highest setting anymore.. Anyone had a similar case?
Mine wouldn't work at first (I'm on Catalina). I restarted my computer and that worked. The downside is I have to restart every time to see any changes. Sure makes bloat editing in Logic much quicker and less tiring on my arm! 😆 For real, thanks for the post man. This is huge for me! 🙏
This doesn't seem to have any effect on mojave, in fact when you enter the terminal script to see the defaults it says not found. Is there an update for this to speed up trackpad on macbook air using mojave latest version as of 2-1019? TY
Interesting, I'm on the latest cumulative update as of a couple days ago 10.14.3 and when getting the defaults (which should show 5.0) it says application process not found, and soxIcignore it and run the next with a 7.0 change (just to test) and get the same error. I'm the only user with full admin privileges. Curious, is there also a way to achieve a faster key repeat rate when holding down a letter do you know? Esit: no idea what I did but rebooted and retried the exact thing and it worked perfect under 10.14.3 lol...maybe I had a space in there or something...ty, this is a great little tip indeed. I'd still be curious about the key repeat rate if you know of one. :-):TY!
Just got a Magic Mouse 2 for my MacBook Pro 2017. The tracking (even on the highest setting) was irritatingly slow. I've gone for 20 which seems to be the right speed for development. There are many forums looking for this answer (especially with the MM2!) You should post it there... Thanks for your help @paulminors:disqus. BTW you have to restart for changes to take place! It was quite easy to miss that step in the way that the blog is laid out. Cheers.
My mouse started tracking slow all of a sudden on my new Mac mini. I think it happened after I plugged in my Wacom digitizer, that I have unplugged again. I can find no way to fix the problem. Even after trying setting the above value to 999.9, my mouse is still tracking way to slow (I've tried a lot of values with restarts in between, nothing helps). I also tried BetterTouchTool mentioned above, the mouse speed setting in there seems to do nothing at all. I'm on OSX Mojave 10.14, maybe that's the cause of my troubles?
I experimented with various numbers. 6.0 and above seem to give a decent boost. Beyond 6 I could not see any difference. e.g I tried 12 and 24, but no visible difference. Its a decent boost, but I still want more.
I fixed my Magic Mouse speed last night when I got home from work. I kept jacking up my speed from the original setting of 3.0 and settled on 20.0 which got me much closer to the speed of my Logitech mouse on my other PC computers. This fix works great! Thanks so much for sharing this information. I am an Electrical Engineer and I looked at 5 different methods for the fix online, but I chose this one only as it seemed to me to be the best engineering fix that you can adjust software control to any speed you like without limitations.
Thank you but doesn't work on ElCapitan, when I poll the current speed it says "The domain/default pair of (kCFPreferencesAnyApplication, com.apple.mouse.scaling) does not exist" (no quotes of course. EDIT: I see I have to change mouse to trackpad if using just the trackpad like on a laptop...you should add this ;-)
I'm on iMac 27, sitting 5 ft from me. I've set mouse speed to 18.0. I've set the minimum screen resolution 1600X900 "Larger Text". Just to give you guys an idea.
I'm on iMac 27, sitting 5 ft from me. I've set mouse speed to 18.0. I've set the minimum screen resolution 1600X900 "Larger Text". Just to give you guys an idea. Chrome default zoom levels at 125%
On Sierra I get this after running the first command: 2017-05-04 17:47:11.133 defaults[92038:18338814] The domain/default pair of (kCFPreferencesAnyApplication, com.apple.mouse.scaling) does not exist
After you do this, if you are used to Windows, you may also want to adjust mouse acceleration, where on a Mac it moves annoying slow unless you are moving the mouse quickly, a feature useful for trackpads, NOT mice.
To turn off mouse acceleration entirely, run the following in the terminal:
After you do this, if you are used to Windows, you may also want to adjust mouse acceleration, where on a Mac it moves annoying slow unless you are moving the mouse quickly, a feature useful for trackpads, NOT mice. To turn off mouse acceleration entirely, run the following in the terminal: defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling -1 To turn mouse acceleration back on, change anything in the mouse preference pane, or run the command again with 1 instead of -1.
Hello - I have tried this several times and every time I reboot and check in terminal the scaling value is back to 3. I cannot seem to see how the change I make in terminal actually stays? Any advice?
Hello - I have tried this several times and every time I reboot and check in terminal the scaling value is back to 3. I cannot seem to see how the change I make in terminal actually stays? Any advice?
-MacBook Pro Catalina v10.15.4
I tried this procedure. But, after rebooting the iMac the speed setting was back at 3. Any suggestions?
Kind regards,
Vera
-g com.apple.mouse.scaling 7.0
3
2)SHUT DOWN instead of restarting
I did everything people suggests. Closed terminal window with cmd-Q then restart or shut down and start my Mac, may be 7 times. Increased speed up to 70.0 No effect.
Behavior of Logitech USB-mouse was affected )) but not of native Mac mouse :(((
so sad. Logitech mouse has opposite setting for 'natural' scroll direction.
(Also, yes I’m using a trackpad and replacing the word “mouse” with trackpad as another commenter suggested.)
I can not get it to work on my MacPro (end 2013) it runs macOS Mojave (v10.14.4)
I followed all your steps multiple times..
When I restart my Mac the terminal still says that the mouse speed is now up to my setting (50.0) but the mouse is slow as on 3.0.
Also the Terminal only applies the command when I close the application before the restart.
When I check the system settings > mouse
the slider for the cursor speed is not even on the highest setting anymore..
Anyone had a similar case?
Curious, is there also a way to achieve a faster key repeat rate when holding down a letter do you know?
Esit: no idea what I did but rebooted and retried the exact thing and it worked perfect under 10.14.3 lol...maybe I had a space in there or something...ty, this is a great little tip indeed. I'd still be curious about the key repeat rate if you know of one. :-):TY!
I can find no way to fix the problem. Even after trying setting the above value to 999.9, my mouse is still tracking way to slow (I've tried a lot of values with restarts in between, nothing helps). I also tried BetterTouchTool mentioned above, the mouse speed setting in there seems to do nothing at all. I'm on OSX Mojave 10.14, maybe that's the cause of my troubles?
EDIT: I see I have to change mouse to trackpad if using just the trackpad like on a laptop...you should add this ;-)
Chrome default zoom levels at 125%
2017-05-04 17:47:11.133 defaults[92038:18338814]
The domain/default pair of (kCFPreferencesAnyApplication, com.apple.mouse.scaling) does not exist
2017-05-04 17:47:11.133 defaults[92038:18338814]
The domain/default pair of (kCFPreferencesAnyApplication, com.apple.mouse.scaling) does not exist
To turn off mouse acceleration entirely, run the following in the terminal:
defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling -1
To turn mouse acceleration back on, change anything in the mouse preference pane, or run the command again with 1 instead of -1.
To turn off mouse acceleration entirely, run the following in the terminal:
defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling -1
To turn mouse acceleration back on, change anything in the mouse preference pane, or run the command again with 1 instead of -1.