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

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 limited by the speed of the keyboard. On both Vista and OS X (I dual boot a MacBook), I have my key repeat rate turned all the way up. But in Visual Studio, and other apps, the rate is still much slower than I would prefer.

How can I make the key repeat rate faster in Visual Studio and other text editors?

Solution

  • On Mac OS X, open the Global Preferences plist

    open ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist

    Then change the InitialKeyRepeat field. Smaller numbers will speed up your cursor rate. The settings dialog will only set it to a minimum of 2, so if you go to 0 or 1, you'll get a faster cursor.

    I had to reboot for this to take effect.