Speeding up the mouse wheel in Ubuntu 18.04

Question

I find I have to scroll a lot to move the text of my page compared to Windows where I can choose the speed of the mouse wheel.

Does Ubuntu have a similar utility and if so how can I access it?

Apparently there are differences between mouse wheel configurations if you are using Wayland or Xorg. On Wayland there isn't a way so far to adjust the speed. Do you know which graphics server are you using? — luisgonzalez, May 02 '18 at 21:15
I am on wayland and would appreciate a link to confirm it is not editable, is it not even possible to modify the libinput to make it a global change? — David McGowan, May 08 '18 at 13:56
If you care about mouse scroll speed acceleration, see also here. — Albert, May 05 '20 at 09:54
Here's my fix: How to permanently fix scroll speed in Chrome, Sublime Text, Foxit PDF reader, and any other application you see fit. I can adjust the speed on an application-by-application basis since they don't all need the same amount of scroll speed adjustment. — Gabriel Staples, Jun 25 '23 at 01:07

score 38 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

38

This solution worked for me with Ubuntu 18.04:

http://www.webupd8.org/2015/12/how-to-change-mouse-scroll-wheel-speed.html

sudo apt-get install imwheel   
cat > ~/.imwheelrc
".*"
None,      Up,   Button4, 8
None,      Down, Button5, 8
Control_L, Up,   Control_L|Button4
Control_L, Down, Control_L|Button5
Shift_L,   Up,   Shift_L|Button4
Shift_L,   Down, Shift_L|Button5

(the 8 at the end of the second and third line are the acceleration numbers, 3 is default)

Then add imwheel --kill --buttons "4 5" as a startup application:

edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

Community

1

answered Jun 01 '18 at 18:49

Jordan

669
1
5
12

5

This worked for me, thanks; but why is it necessary? Is there a scroll-wheel-speed bug in Ubuntu 18? – logidelic Jan 22 '19 at 18:27
Imwheel was working perfectly for me. But then I have bought a new mouse with buttons 4 and 5. Using your command it kills them. Is there any other method? Kind regards, – Le Nass Jan 26 '19 at 22:44
use xev to find out your mouse's actual button numbers for the wheel? – Tanachat Feb 08 '19 at 07:13
Work fine, but seems it affects my touchpad scrolling speed as well. – Alexey Demin Oct 17 '20 at 01:23
The difficulty of accomplishing such a basic task is embarrassing for the linux developers. – Antonio Sesto Mar 29 '22 at 07:52

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 15 '19 at 15:47

2

May seem obvious but there is also the possibility of increasing scroll on a per-application basis, which may be all you need.

answered Nov 15 '19 at 15:47

Andrew

190
6

Bad idea if you have to do that on some applications (for example, firefox + libreoffice + gedit) because it's a lot of repetition, instead of speading it with OS parameters. This option is good to use if you want to slow down / increase that scroll speed in a particular app – damadam Nov 15 '19 at 15:55
1

@damadam Well but maybe you're not trying to actually deal with the entire OS in the first place, maybe it's just a problem you have with 1 or 2 particular applications. That was the point of my answer. – Andrew Nov 15 '19 at 19:45
Yes, but how? Are you talking application-specific? I haven't seen this as an option in most programs. – starbeamrainbowlabs Mar 05 '21 at 15:53
2

@starbeamrainbowlabs The application would provide it. A good example is Firefox about:config + mousewheel.min_line_scroll_amount. Also any half-decent PC video game (that uses scrolling) ever. – Andrew Mar 05 '21 at 22:59

Jason Doucette · Answer 3 · 2020-01-15T22:16:02.193

Cannot comment (only 31 of 50 needed reputation), so I have to write this as an answer:

imwheel works for Ubuntu 16.04, but the above answers destroys the Ctrl+Mousewheel from zooming text, which for some of us is commonly used.

The solution is to provide it for both Ctrl keys:

".+"
    @Exclude

".*chrome.*"
    @Priority=100
    None,      Up,   Button4, 3
    None,      Down, Button5, 3
    Shift_L,   Up,   Shift_L|Button4
    Shift_L,   Down, Shift_L|Button5
    Shift_R,   Up,   Shift_R|Button4
    Shift_R,   Down, Shift_r|Button5
    Control_L, Up,   Control_L|Button4
    Control_L, Down, Control_L|Button5
    Control_R, Up,   Control_R|Button4
    Control_R, Down, Control_R|Button5

The Exclude section is required so that it does NOT affect other apps (no idea why it would, but it does).

score 1 · Answer 4 · edited Jan 19 '22 at 14:00

Configuring imwheel does not work well for me in Ubuntu 20.04. Changing ~/.imwheel from

None,      Up,   Button4, 1
None,      Down, Button5, 1

to

None,      Up,   Button4, 3
None,      Down, Button5, 3

gives (me) a bad scrolling experience because the faster scrolling is achieved by scrolling in "jumps", not in a floating, faster manner.

However, I have a Logitech Wireless MX Master mouse and use Solaar (v1.0.1) to configure it. When configuring the mouse in Solaar, I can select "Wheel resolution" which gives me a much better and faster floating scroll experience.

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 04 '22 at 21:27

On my ThinkPad, to change the scroll speed using the TrackPoint, inspired by other answers here, I did

xinput list

and found the TrackPoint to be id 14, so continued with

xinput list-props 14

under which I saw libinput Scrolling Pixel Distance. I set this using

xinput set-prop 14 'libinput Scrolling Pixel Distance' x

where x could be values between 10 and 50 (I experimented), lower values meaning faster scrolling.

Speeding up the mouse wheel in Ubuntu 18.04

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