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Increase Mouse Sensitivity on Mac Beyond the Maximum

You can change the mouse sensitivity settings on your Mac by going to System Preferences > Mouse. Here, you can tweak mouse tracking and scrolling speeds. However, if you’re someone like me, who has the habit of fast-paced mouse tracking, you may find it slow even on the max settings. In that case, the preferred option is to use the software that came bundled with your mouse. For instance, Logitech has a dedicated app called Logitech Options, where you can increase the mouse sensitivity, including pointer and scrolling speed. However, many brands either don’t have dedicated applications or are incompatible with Mac. Thankfully, we can improve the mouse speed on Mac by either using third-party software or overriding the terminal’s values.

Method 1- Increase Mouse Speed on Mac Using USB Overdrive

USB Overdrive is a third-party app that lets you take full advantage of a USB or Bluetooth mouse, keyboard, and other accessories. Below is how you can speed up your mouse on Mac using USB Overdrive.

  1. Install USB Overdrive on your Mac from this link.

  2. Now, tap the Apple icon in the menu bar and head to System Preferences.

  3. Here, you’ll find USB Overdrive at the bottom. Tap it.

  4. It’ll open the USB Overdrive Settings window.

  5. See the “Any mouse, any app” drop-down menu at the top? Use it to select your mouse.

  6. Then, enable and increase the slider for Speed.

  7. Similarly, increase the Acceleration (the cursor distance increases if the mouse is moved quickly) if you want to. That’s it. This way, you can increase your mouse speed and acceleration beyond the maximum allowed on Mac. By the way, you can see the devices currently being handled by USB Overdrive in the Status tab, next to Settings.

Note that USB Overdrive is a shareware application. You can download and use it for free, but it’ll have timely login reminders and a short countdown when you open the user interface.

Method 2- Use Terminal to Increase macOS Mouse Speed

The other way is to override your mouse speed values in macOS by using the Terminal Window, as follows:

  1. Open the Terminal Window on your Mac. You can open it from utilities in the launchpad.

  2. Now, paste and enter defaults read -g com.apple.mouse.scaling to check your current mouse speed.

  3. It’ll revert with a number, indicating your current mouse speed.

  4. The maximum speed you can set from system preferences is 3.0. But using the terminal, you can increase the speed past that value.

  5. To increase the mouse speed, type and enter defaults write -g com.apple.mouse.scaling .

  6. Here, we’ve set the speed to 5. You can replace the number based on your liking. Once done, restart your Mac. Note that it is completely reversible- you can change mouse settings in System Preferences to reset these values.

Method 3- Using Mouse Acceleration Preference Pane

For more precise control of Mouse sensitivity, you can download Mouse Acceleration Preference Pane on your Mac or MacBook. It is completely free and lets you manually adjust or disable the mouse acceleration, as shown below.

  1. Download Mouse Acceleration Preference Pane from here.
  2. Once downloaded, locate and open the preference pane.
  3. Here, you can tweak Mouse and trackpad tracking speed. Note that it may not work on recent macOS versions. We couldn’t make it run on macOS Ventura and Monterey.

Wrapping Up

This was all about how you can increase the mouse sensitivity on Mac beyond what’s allowed by the system. I hope it helps you get the most out of your mouse. Do try and let me know if it worked well for you in the comments below. Stay tuned for more such articles. You might be interested in:

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