Is there a way to disable mouse acceleration in OSX Yosemite?

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Level 1

1 points

Is there a way to disable mouse acceleration in OSX Yosemite?

i have used my dads iMac and MBP in the past and always noticed how bad the mouse response was in my opinion. Mind you, some people like the way the mouse responds in OSX and will probably have no idea what my issue is. That is mouse acceleration and the lack of option to disable it in the mouse settings panel. Here is a good explanation about what it is, also in the video is a visual example.

"Mouse or cursor acceleration, to put it simply, makes the travel distance of your cursor on the screen reliant of the velocity of your physical mouse movement rather than just the distance that you move your mouse. So making one movement of the same distance at two different speeds will cause two different relative cursor movements, with quick movement causing the cursor to travel a greater distance."

source:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16diwK6HWbI

So the thing i want to accomplish, is making the physical mouse movement one-to-one with the cursor speed on the screen. As an example: moving my mouse 10 cm would always make my mouse on the screen go 1000 pixels, no matter how fast i move my mouse.

I've had my mouse set up like that in windows and linux for quite some time now and i hope there is an easy way to set the mouse response like that in OSX as well.

I want to make clear that this isn't just an issue in games where you want to have great mouse precision. I have become really accustomed to this way of mouse response in any type of application. So the problem lies not in any mouse settings of any game/program. The problem lies in how OSX translates physical mouse movement to cursor movement.

Anyway, i ran into this issue about a year ago when i was using my dad's computer. i've had my own windows computer for some time now. An option to disable mouse acceleration in OSX Yosemite might have been implemented properly in the mean time. I have searched this community and found some old posts of people who had this same problem as me, but never read about any fix for it. The main reason i am asking this is because i am considering buying a Macbook.

I'd rather not use any third party software, but if there is any out that that just works and is easy to use, let me know.

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.2), null

Posted on Apr 6, 2015 7:32 AM

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Answer 1

Sudap Author

Level 1

1 points

Apr 22, 2015 4:05 AM in response to Sudap

bump, still checking if someone knows a solution.

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Answer 2

tbirdvet

Level 6

17,048 points

Apr 22, 2015 4:33 AM in response to Sudap

The only setting I know of is adjusting the scrolling speed in preferences, accessibility, mouse options, scrolling.

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Answer 3

Sudap Author

Level 1

1 points

Apr 23, 2015 7:52 AM in response to tbirdvet

you didn't even read the topic it seems. this topic is not about scrolling speed. You must be very confused.

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Answer 4

cdhw

Level 4

3,594 points

Apr 23, 2015 9:50 AM in response to Sudap

Please don't be obnoxious to people like tbirdvet trying to help; nobody here owes you an answer, or anything else for that matter.

Anyway, Yosemite seems to enable mouse acceleration by default. You can disable it to get a constant pixels pointer moves / meters mouse moved ratio by typing this in terminal:

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

you'll need to logout and log back in for changes to take effect. To restore the standard behaviour:

defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling 2

should do the trick.

C.

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Answer 5

svpumpco

Level 1

0 points

Aug 30, 2015 4:52 PM in response to cdhw

This seriously kept me from throwing my new 27" mac away. Being a Windows user since the dawn of time i had the HARDEST time just trying to close out of a window on my mac because of this acceleration. PROBLEM FIXED! Thank you!

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Answer 6

Jan 25, 2016 10:46 AM in response to cdhw

Hello

I did exactly what cdhw told us to do. The cursor does weird stuff now, i can't really explain it, if i click on something it will undo the klick, or if I go to the lower left corner of a window to change its form, the cursor will be stuck in that "two-arrowed-form" until i click somewhere else. now if I type the second thing into the terminal, it does not change anything back to normal... Games are unplayable now and my mac is very uncomfortable to use.

I copy-pasted it into the terminal, so i made definitely no writing mistakes.

Is there any way to undo something typed into the terminal?

Thanks a lot

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Answer 7

cdhw

Level 4

3,594 points

Jan 25, 2016 12:11 PM in response to DreamFable

I doubt that the symptoms you describe were caused by using either of the commands I suggested. It's possible, but unlikely, that if you have a third-party mouse driver there could be some interaction. You can, however, remove the key the defaults command creates using

defaults delete .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling

, which I believe (but can't check because I've El Capitan on everything now) restores the 'pristine' state for Yosemite.

The behaviour you are describing reminds me of one of the Accessibility features that make one click put the mouse into 'button down' mode and a second click to put the mouse into 'button up' mode. If you were experimenting with mouse settings before trying the 'defaults' recipe you probably enabled it unintentionally.

C.

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Answer 8

Jan 25, 2016 1:50 PM in response to cdhw

Thanks for the Quick answer.

I tried out USB Overdrive and Smooth Mouse, but uninstalled them again. It started after I typed in the first command. Maybe I should set up my mac again.

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Answer 9

cdhw

Level 4

3,594 points

Jan 25, 2016 2:27 PM in response to DreamFable

Open

System Preferences > Mouse

and change the tracking speed. Then use:

defaults read .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling

to see the value being set after each change. It should change from zero, corresponding to 'slow' to ca 3 'fast'. If this happens then you can be sure that the effect of the defaults command I posted, which only persists as long as you don't change the tracking speed, has been undone.

Try rebooting in Safe Mode and borrowing another mouse and see it the issue goes away in either case. If not, post a new question to Peripherals forum, where the mice experts hang out. Run EtreCheck:

http://etrecheck.com/

and post the report with your question - I suspect you have a piece of third-party mouse-driver installed and EtreCheck will allow folks to identify it.

C.

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