Permanent mouse speed-up

Oct 24, '01 08:13:23PM

Contributed by: robg

Although I've previously published an article on Turbocharging Your Mouse", the method described in that article had problems - it didn't stick after a screensaver or USB hub switch, for example.

Carsten Klapp has addressed the problem in a much lower-level manner, by creating the AppleUSBMouse Turbo Edition kernel extension. Carsten modified the Darwin source code to greatly speed up the mouse tracking. His page details how he did this, and provides enough information for you to hack the file yourself, if you're so inclined and have the Dev Tools installed. The nice thing about the low-level solution is that it changes the actual default "slow" speed ... so even though I still have the problem of the mouse speed getting reset when I use my switchbox, it actually gets reset to a HIGHER speed than where I left it!

I'll probably tweak the driver a bit for my own tastes; the method of increasing the speed (by lowering the resolution) seems to make the mouse a bit jumpy. Still, this is a GREAT improvement over the stock settings. For fun, set your mouse speed slider all the way to the right and jump from screen edge to screen edge by just thinking about it!

This is a kernel extension, and theretically could do Bad Things to your computer. However, it doesn't replace any Apple parts, it merely sits on top of them. Also, I've been running it for a few days with no ill effects (other than a reset of my 'uptime' after the first install - you have to restart to get the new extension to load over the default one). If you do have a problem, simply delete the installed extension and reboot (instructions are on Carsten's page).

The beauty of open-source -- if you don't like something and you've got the skills, you can change it!

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Mac OS X Hints
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