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06 - Increase macOS key repeat rate

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Increase macOS key repeat rate

  • By default, when you leave a key pressed in macos, it takes ages to move the cursor where you need it, to solve that, you can decrease the key repeat rate
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# Paste this very large terminal command, and then try to navigate back and forth, it will waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too slow
# Also open a file in nvim and navigate up/down
  • In the terminal you are able to specify a value even lower that in the system settings
  • Go to Settings - Keyboard and configure:
    • “Key repeat rate” all the way to Fast
    • “Delay until repeat” all the way to the right to Short
  • To see what the current values for each the Key repeat rate and the Delay until repeat are
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defaults read NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat
defaults read NSGlobalDomain InitialKeyRepeat
  • To lower the values even more
  • https://gist.github.com/hofmannsven/ff21749b0e6afc50da458bebbd9989c5
  • Normal minimum is 2 (30 ms)
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defaults write -g KeyRepeat -int 1

Normal minimum is 15 (225 ms)

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defaults write -g InitialKeyRepeat -int 10
  • After this, reboot for the changes to take effect
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sudo reboot
  • We’ll learn to move through commands even faster in a latter video related to zsh-vi-mode
This post is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by the author.