Removing Mouse Acceleration OSX

I just read this entire thread and it's amazing how it so quickly devolved into a p*ssing contest. In any event, to address the OP this is what I've had in a Stickies note for years now (because contrary to some people's opinion, the built-in OS X mouse acceleration algorithm is an issue for a significant number of users):

Magic Mouse hacks

Increase Mouse tracking speed (normal setting is 0 - 3)

defaults read -g com.apple.mouse.scaling

defaults write -g com.apple.mouse.scaling 6

Disable mouse acceleration altogether

defaults write -g com.apple.mouse.scaling -1

These are TERMINAL commands and you do need to log out and then log back in for either of the WRITE commands to take effect. The Tracking control in the Mouse System Preference essentially sets this value from 0 to 3. You can set it higher with a value above 3 if you desire ... but as others have noted this really doesn't address the acceleration issue. That will address the problem some people have with "not being able to traverse a large monitor quickly with little wrist movement" (i.e. not needing to pick up the mouse and keep moving it) .... but it will NOT address the problem some people have with the "slow, precise mouse movement being too slow". Why? Because there's no way in OS X to change the built-in mouse acceleration curve. All this does for you is increase the mouse tracking speed beyond what the UI allows you to do.

Which brings me to the other WRITE command. Setting this value to -1 essentially takes the acceleration curve out of the equation altogether .... which is what the OP was asking for. It also seems to set the tracking speed to a relatively high value. You may notice that the setting in the UI is no longer at the highest setting but don't touch it because that will override the terminal command you just entered. The actual tracking speed is faster than it would seem. Again, using this command will address the problem some people have with "not being able to traverse a large monitor quickly with little wrist movement" (i.e. not needing to pick up the mouse and keep moving it) .... it also addresses the problem some people have with "slow, precise mouse movement being too slow" ..... but it essentially accomplishes the latter by eliminating the ability to have "slow, precise mouse movement" altogether. Why? Because there's no way in OS X to change the built-in mouse acceleration curve.

So if you wish to use a Magic Mouse and the way it works is an issue for you then you basically have to "pick your poison". You can either A) have a faster tracking speed along with an acceleration curve that is still too sensitive, or B) have a faster tracking speed with no acceleration curve at all.

Now what people are asking for ... and what third-party drivers from MS, Kensington, etc. provide ... is the ability to have C) a faster tracking speed along with an acceleration curve that is not so sensitive. The only problem is that different people have differing opinions on what's too fast or too slow ... along with what's too sensitive or not sensitive enough. Which is why it is perfectly logical and reasonable for people to request that Apple allow its users to set the tracking speed and acceleration curve independently in OS X. Maybe keep it as a single control for newbies or the majority of users who may be cool with how it works right now. But at a minimum provide an advanced option which would allow more savvy users or Windows converts to tweak their mouse settings with dual controls. Personally, I would prefer to increase the tracking speed and flatten out the acceleration curve compared to the default OS X settings on my machine. I imagine I'm not the only one. Why this is even "controversial" in this thread is beyond me. 😕

Now what people are asking for ... and what third-party drivers from MS, Kensington, etc. provide ... is the ability to have C) a faster tracking speedalong with an acceleration curve that is not so sensitive.

It isn't quite that simple. Some are also (in effect) asking for a differently shaped acceleration curve, one that is less sensitive at low tracking speeds without sacrificing so much sensitivity at high tracking speeds that they can't move the cursor large screen distances without picking up the mouse. Basically, they want to set the sensitivity of different parts of the curve independently.

Just providing two independent controls for tracking speed & acceleration sensitivity won't do this. If the acceleration climbs rapidly from zero tracking speed at all sensitivity settings, they will never get what they want no matter how they set the two controls.

Some third party drivers might provide some means of setting different parts of the acceleration curve independently. Years ago, the Kensington MouseWorks driver used to do this via access to the numeric values of the breakpoints of the tracking speed vs. cursor speed matrix. This made it possible to set almost any shaped acceleration curve imaginable, but with dozens of points in the table it was very confusing to use & Kensington removed the option. From what one of their people told me, I gathered this was because it was too expensive to provide support for a feature few could use without help. Some other company may still provide this kind of option but I personally don't know of any.

http://triq.net/articles/mouse-curve-app-mac-os-x

Just piling anything and everything into this thread.

If this helps anyone then let us know.

It is interesting to note the comment on the Mouse Curve page about the "highly successful" petition to Apple, which has only 1002 signatures to date & just requests "a checkbox added to the mouse preference panel that allows us to turn off mouse acceleration." That is not what most users unhappy with Apple's curves are requesting, so it is hard to say if that is responsible for the small number of signatures.

The Mouse Curve app looks a lot like it can do what the old Kensington option did, but with a graphics interface for adjusting custom curves instead of the very hard to use numeric table Kensington opted for. Maybe that will make it more successful, although at this point in its development is hard to say how well that works because there are so few comments about it.

Assuming it does provide the same range of customization as the old Kensington driver, one thing to keep in mind if you try the beta is that jagged curves that go both up & down can make the pointer almost impossible to position correctly. Without some kind of override or reset it could be very difficult to undo this so I advise against creating radical curves until you get a feel for what it can do.

EDIT: I just tried downloading the available 1.1 version & using it with Snow Leopard. Although it is supposed to be a 32/64 bit binary, it appears to run only in 32 bit mode on my iMac, does not offer anything besides a slider for "Mouse" & one for "Trackpad" plus a checkbox to enable the settings at login. It doesn't seem to have anything else working, at least that I could find.

Looks like there is another program called SideTrack that had a "Feel more like Windows" tab.

Another one for you to look into R C-R if you get the time.

It's discussed here, but looks as if the dev has pulled the pin.

Has anyone tried the trick with turning the mouse sensitivity down to zero in system pref and turning the dpi on the mouse to full in os x lion. Want to get lion but i need confirmation that this fix will work. And for bonus points has anyone done this in lion and played starcraft 2 without any problems. Thanx

That's just rediculous. I paid over $2,400 for my macbook pro. All i need is the option to disable mouse acceleration. I have purchased 2, 3rd party applications that are suposed to do this yet they fail. I have tried numerous console commands, yet they fail.

If these 3rd party devs or all these console commands don't do the trick then how can it be as simple or unimportant as you claim.

I can get this feature from a $200 netbook on windows running vista a 8 year old operating system and your telling me that if apple were to implement this they would have to implement all requests and the os would become bloated or bloatware?

I have no complaints about the acceleration and tracking with the trackpad. It just about all situations it is the best. But when I plug my $100 gaming mouse into my macbook to play a source game and it fails to respond at all with raw input I am very unhappy. When I start doing research and spending money to FIX THE ERROR WITH OSX and still fails, then that is rediculous. How hard could it possibly be for apple to add such an option to allow us to disable acceleration on our mice. Even tho mac now supports more and more games I play I still have to resort to running bootcamp windows to play the same games available for mac osx only because of the horrible mouse response.

Spend more time helping people then trolling threads trying to tell people how their problems aren't problems that this forum should be bothered with. give me a break.

Thanks for the link. I"ve tried this and it was unsuccesful with my macbook running lion. but thanks for looking out.

If people are wondering steermouse and mouse acceleration preffpane doesnt' work either. Neither does any command i've typed into console.

robertfromscarborough wrote:

That's just rediculous

Really? It's more "rediculuos" (sic) than using a +$2400 MacBook to emulate a $200 Windows XP netbook to play games?

I paid over $2,400 for my macbook pro.

...

I can get this feature from a $200 netbook on windows running vista a 8 year old operating system

...

But when I plug my $100 gaming mouse into my macbook to play a source game

...

I still have to resort to running bootcamp windows to play the same games available for mac osx only because of the horrible mouse response.

...

I don't think you understood me correctly. What I'm saying is every single windows computer even the cheapest ones have an option for disabling mouse acceleration. It's ludicrous to think that adding such a tiny feature to give the user an option to disable in OSX is bloatware. I do not use or own a netbook.

Mouse response varies on a per user basis. Its obviously an issue with many people. Apple shouldn't be the ones to dictate how I use my mouse. I do not understand how this isn't blatantly obvious to everyone.

The mouse acceleration is perfect for apples trackpad. But if they are going to let 3rd party mice (I.e. Logitch) run on their systems then why not let them support raw input? Why is it such a big deal to enable a feature that does nothing other than give user preference? Your obviously not a gamer because if you were then you would understand what people here are complaining about.

Source games rely on raw input for accurate mouse speed and precision. logitech mice in the $100 range have completely customizable configurations relating to these features. Raw input gives the mouse direct control over acceleration curve and sensitivity bypassing OS pre determined curves. Apple blocks this from happening. Without using console comands my mouse is completely un usable in game. Wen I say unusable I mean it literally. It doesn't move.

Paying for a high tier laptop from apple so that I can work and game on the go I shouldn't have issues like this. I wouldn't with any other OS.

So reargardless of how apple thinks I should be using my mouse it shouldn't e in their right to control that. And adding a selectable option to simply disable mouse acceleratio. Isn't going to ruin the experience for anyone else.

The reply won't let me link the petition no matter how I type it. So if you google "mouse petition apple acceleration" it will be on the first page. Give it a look if your interested

The closest I could get it was setting the default to -1 in console with my g9x dpi set to max via windows

Thank you very much for this!

Although when i changed default to -1, I turned too slow, I played around with the value until it feels almost exactly what I'm used to.

And to people who tried to help but are unaware of gaming, and especially to the troll(s) - mouse acceleration is not sensitivity and you have to be able to adjust them independently. When I needed a new comp, I switched back to a Mac (v10.6.8) b/c the game that I like was going to be supported [ turns out it still isnt but a different version is :-( ].

However, I was asked to join a team and now I need more practice. And of course the best client for that doesn't run on Mac. So I had to upgrade to Lion and I immediately recognize that my scroll wheel is reversed, my macro keys are different, and worst of all - this mouse accel issue. Thankfully, I eventually found this thread.

And also to the trolls - after spending $2k on a mac, and using a mouse for years that costs $100 to replace every time it wears out, I expect them to work well together, ESPECIALLY when mouse accel wasn't an issue UNTIL I upgraded to Lion.

Thanks again AussieDJ!

the -1 was to slow for me also at first. I play Team Fortress primarily and am very particular with my mouse movement.

What I did because logitech doesn't have supported drivers for OS X I plugged my mouse into my windows home desktop gaming computer (I use my mbp on the go). I turned the DPI up to max and incremented down by a few hundred dpi for the dpi selector.

Then set my mouse to -1 in osx. After that I am now able to play just fine. Also the mouse wheel is annoying but I do not use it to switch weapons. I use the number row and assign numbers to my mouse tilt and thumb buttons.

There is an app I believe called Mouse Acceleration Preffpane that I think allows you to reverse the scroll back to default in Lion. If that isn't the right app I know there is one that works because I came across it when I was hunting for a fix for the acceleration.

ONe more thing. I need to use 2 mice to play. My "in game" mouse currently works perfect with any source game except when I'm in a menu, it is so fast that I cannot acurately click the menu buttons, I assume this is because of the super high dpi. To get around this I either reach over my g15 to use the trackpad or keep another mouse handy.

Good luck to you and I wish I could be more help. It'd be so easy for apple just to give us an option here instead of hacks and tweaks.

how'd you figure that i was playing a game on the crappy Source Engine?

there's a thread here that fixed the scroll - just had to uncheck "Move content in direction...."

anyway, after rebooting, this default went back to 0.6875. i changed it again then ~20 minutes later, mid-round, it went back to 0.6875!

i really cant play like this - i turn to look right, expecting a 90 degree turn & i go to 180 or 270 degrees! and dont have access to a pc to tweak the Logitech mouse. so frustrating considering that it worked fine in v10.6.8).

and i gotta admit, the macro changes are frustrating too b/c i liked the v10.6.8 default ones & when i turn my keyboard to gaming mode i cant use ALT+TAB; but now the macro [G9} that did that for me ingame has been changed. and of course i cant bind it that way b/c gaming mode prevents ALT+TAB.

apple really should've beta-tested this in Lion b/c it was fine in v10.6.8, especially b/c more games than ever can be played on a Mac & Logitech mice & kybds are supported 😮