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Bavouzet Benoît
Bavouzet Benoît

Posted on • Updated on

Ubuntu 20.04 mouse scroll wheel speed

Ubuntu 20.04 mouse scroll wheel speed


I had a very slow scroll speed until I found that.

Install and run

  1. You have to install imwhell with :

    
    
    sudo apt install imwheel
    

2. And download this bash script on [http://www.nicknorton.net](http://www.nicknorton.net/mousewheel.sh) (thanks to him)
You can type, as @victoor say in comments :
>You can just do ` bash <(curl -s http://www.nicknorton.net/mousewheel.sh) ` instead of copy the script manually and changing permissions. :) 
    ```


#!/bin/bash
# Version 0.1 Tuesday, 07 May 2013
# Comments and complaints http://www.nicknorton.net
# GUI for mouse wheel speed using imwheel in Gnome
# imwheel needs to be installed for this script to work
# sudo apt-get install imwheel
# Pretty much hard wired to only use a mouse with
# left, right and wheel in the middle.
# If you have a mouse with complications or special needs,
# use the command xev to find what your wheel does.
#
### see if imwheel config exists, if not create it ###
if [ ! -f ~/.imwheelrc ]
then
cat >~/.imwheelrc<<EOF
".*"
None,      Up,   Button4, 1
None,      Down, Button5, 1
Control_L, Up,   Control_L|Button4
Control_L, Down, Control_L|Button5
Shift_L,   Up,   Shift_L|Button4
Shift_L,   Down, Shift_L|Button5
EOF
fi
##########################################################
CURRENT_VALUE=$(awk -F 'Button4,' '{print $2}' ~/.imwheelrc)
NEW_VALUE=$(zenity --scale --window-icon=info --ok-label=Apply --title="Wheelies" --text "Mouse wheel speed:" --min-value=1 --max-value=100 --value="$CURRENT_VALUE" --step 1)
if [ "$NEW_VALUE" == "" ];
then exit 0
fi
sed -i "s/\($TARGET_KEY *Button4, *\).*/\1$NEW_VALUE/" ~/.imwheelrc # find the string Button4, and write new value.
sed -i "s/\($TARGET_KEY *Button5, *\).*/\1$NEW_VALUE/" ~/.imwheelrc # find the string Button5, and write new value.
cat ~/.imwheelrc
imwheel -kill


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  1. Then set up the .sh file to executable with : ```

chmod +x mousewheel.sh

4. And then run script with :
    ```


./mousewheel.sh


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  1. And set your mouse wheel speed in the popup by clicking on apply button. (my setting is 7) Re-run script for change.

  2. Finally add imwheel in ubuntu startup application.

If you have troubleshooting with previous and next mouse buttons :

  • Add -b "4 5" to imwhell :


imwheel -b "4 5"


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You can found others details here for setting speed by app :

Or in the man page : man imwheel

Image : Pexels

Sorry, it's my first post.
Have a nice day !

Top comments (63)

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richstoneio profile image
Rich Steinmetz

Speed 7 👍

This happened for me when I added some monitors and "Put Windows" to my setup.

Not sure whose exact fault it is in the end.

The solution works well, although the scrolling is not as smooth as I'm used to, but much better than before.

Thanks a bunch! 💚

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richstoneio profile image
Rich Steinmetz

OK, just turned it down to 3 😬

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bbavouzet profile image
Bavouzet Benoît

Ok, thank you for your comment 😀😉🙏

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tamalban profile image
tamalban

If I try to run the script, it says "Value out of range.".
If I run "bash <(curl -s nicknorton.net/mousewheel.sh)" as superuser then I see the windows to adjust the speed and it works fine.
Adding it to the startup doesn't help... each time I have to run it as root.
What am I doing wrong?
Using this on Kubuntu 20.04.1 LTS and Thinkpad L380

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tamalban profile image
tamalban

nevermind, deleting ~/.imwheelrc and re-running the script fixed it.

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bbavouzet profile image
Bavouzet Benoît

Ok 👍😊

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victoor profile image
Víctor Falcón

You can just do bash <(curl -s http://www.nicknorton.net/mousewheel.sh) instead of copy the script manually and changing permissions. :)

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bbavouzet profile image
Bavouzet Benoît

Ok, good tip ! I will add this to post ;)
Many thanks !

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alfmateos profile image
alfmateos

Thanks a lot, you solved my problem!

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bbavouzet profile image
Bavouzet Benoît

Thank you to dev.to community 😀
Have fun

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brownd profile image
Daniel Brown

Your script doesn't work for me.

Here are my revised lines that made the script work for me (line numbers included):

29  CURRENT_VALUE=$(awk -F 'Button4,' '{print $2}' ~/.imwheelrc | grep -Eo [0-9]+)
31  NEW_VALUE=$(zenity --scale --window-icon=info --ok-label=Apply --title="Wheelies" --text="Mouse wheel speed:" --min-value=1 --max-value=100 --value="$CURRENT_VALUE" --step 1)
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FYI the changes are: added grep to return the numbers only and put an equals sign in the --text option for zenity.

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middienomad profile image
middieNomad

Thanks mate, this worked like a charm.

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bbavouzet profile image
Bavouzet Benoît

You are welcome, thanks to you and dev.to 😊

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albertzeyer profile image
Albert Zeyer

A couple of other options are listed here: askubuntu.com/questions/285689/inc...

I implemented an own simple Python script which you can simply run in the background, which implements mouse scroll wheel acceleration: github.com/albertz/mouse-scroll-wh...

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viveknath322 profile image
Vivek Nath.R • Edited

Hi,

When I run step 4, I'm getting this "This option is not available. Please see --help for all possible usages."

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bbavouzet profile image
Bavouzet Benoît

Sorry, have you downloaded script on step 2 ? Or copy and past ?

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hoangphucitjp profile image
Kyouko__O

I got same issue. Both copy&paste and download the script produce same issue

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patriciomase profile image
Patricio Gabriel Maseda

Worked flawlessly in ubuntu 18 !

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bbavouzet profile image
Bavouzet Benoît

Cool ! 👍
Have a nice day !

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caleb15 profile image
Caleb Collins-Parks

For those wondering how to do step 6 see io.bikegremlin.com/11541/linux-mou...

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bbavouzet profile image
Bavouzet Benoît

Thank you for your link 👍