How can I increase the key repeat rate beyond the OS's limit?

Question

I have a bad habit of using the cursor keys of my keyboard to navigate source code. It\'s something I\'ve done for 15 years and this of course means that my navigating speed is

Answer 1

As mentioned by the hyperlogic, on Mac OS X, internally, there are two parameters dealing with the keyboard speed: KeyRepeat and InitialKeyRepeat. In the System Preferences they are mapped to the Key Repeat Rate and the Delay Until Repeat sliders. The slider ranges and the associated internal parameter values (in parenthesis) are show below. They seem to be multipliers of the 15 ms keyboard sampling interval.

Key Repeat Rate (KeyRepeat)                 Delay Until Repeat (InitialKeyRepeat)
|--------------------------------|          |----------------------|-----------------|
slow (120)                      fast (2)    off (30000)            long (120)        short (25)
0.5 char/s                      33 char/s       

Fortunately, these parameters can be set beyond the predefined limits directly in the ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist file. I found the following values most convenient for myself:

KeyRepeat = 1         --> 1/(1*15 ms) = 66.7 char/s
InitialKeyRepeat = 15 --> 15*15 ms = 225 ms

Note that in the latest Mac OS X revisions the sliders are named slightly differently.

Answer 2

For OS X, the kernel extension KeyRemap4MacBook will allow you to fine tune all sorts of keyboard parameters, among which the key repeat rate (I set mine to 15 ms, and it works nice).

Answer 3

Seems that you can't do this easily on Windows 7.

When you press and hold the button, the speed is controlled by Windows registry key : HCU->Control Panel->Keyboard->Keyboard Delay.

By setting this param to 0 you get maximum repeat rate. The drama is that you can't go below 0 if the repeat speed is still slow for you. 0-delay means that repeat delay is 250ms. But, 250ms delay is still SLOW as hell. See this : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc978658.aspx

You still can go to Accesibility, but you should know that those options are to help disabled people to use their keyboard, not give help for fast-typing geeks. They WON'T help. Use Linux, they tell you.

I bieleve the solution for Windows lies in hardware control. Look for special drivers for your keyboards or try to tweak existing ones.