Bavouzet Benoît

Posted on May 1, 2020 • Edited on Dec 22, 2020

Ubuntu 20.04 mouse scroll wheel speed

#ubuntu #mouse

Ubuntu 20.04 mouse scroll wheel speed

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

Install and run

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

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

chmod +x mousewheel.sh

4. And then run script with :
    ```


./mousewheel.sh

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

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

Fixing Mouse Wheel on Chrome in Ubuntu 18.04 Virtualbox / VMWare

Dan Voyce ・ Jul 23 '19

#ubuntu #scrolling #virtualbox #mousewheel

Or in the man page : `man imwheel`

Image : Pexels

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

Top comments (63)

Rich Steinmetz • Oct 21 '20

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! 💚

Rich Steinmetz • Oct 21 '20

OK, just turned it down to 3 😬

Bavouzet Benoît • Oct 21 '20

Ok, thank you for your comment 😀😉🙏

tamalban • Dec 23 '20

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

tamalban • Dec 23 '20

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

Bavouzet Benoît • Dec 23 '20

Ok 👍😊

Víctor Falcón • Dec 17 '20

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

Bavouzet Benoît • Dec 22 '20

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

alfmateos • Oct 18 '20

Thanks a lot, you solved my problem!

Bavouzet Benoît • Oct 21 '20

Thank you to dev.to community 😀
Have fun

Daniel Brown • Feb 28 '22

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)

FYI the changes are: added grep to return the numbers only and put an equals sign in the --text option for zenity.

middieNomad • Sep 12 '20

Thanks mate, this worked like a charm.

Bavouzet Benoît • Sep 13 '20

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

Albert Zeyer • Jan 18 '21

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...