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I want to increase mouse sensitivity beyond the limits set in Windows 7 Control Panel. I found various mouse sensitivity settings in regedit under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse.

Can I increase mouse speed and senstivity there (which is limited in control panel)?

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  • Increase pointer speed in main.cpl control panel or Command: reg add "HKCU\Control Panel\Mouse" /v "MouseSensitivity" /d "20" /f
    – Biswapriyo
    Oct 15, 2017 at 20:00
  • 1
    The best way to increase mouse sensitivity beyond the limits of your mouse is to buy a better mouse. Depending on your budget and needs, there are magnificent mice to be had.
    – harrymc
    Feb 24, 2019 at 17:59

7 Answers 7

Reset to default
15

As MoE bis said, you need to edit the mouse acceleration curve. This refers to the registry keys

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse\SmoothMouseXCurve
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse\SmoothMouseYCurve

You can of course edit these values with the built-in registry editor, but it is more convenient to use the CustomCurve (direct download, archive link) application. This requires .NET Framework 4.0 or newer.

Screenshot:

CustomCurve application

I quote the short guide from the website:

Generally speaking:

  • The X value of a point represents how fast you move the mouse.
  • The Y value represents how much the cursor moves in response.

For a more in-depth explanation about the mouse acceleration curve, see this article.

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  • Does it also works for Windows 10?
    – wonsuc
    Apr 22, 2018 at 21:06
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    Yes, it does. Very nice.
    – Patrice Gahide
    Aug 23, 2019 at 21:42
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In regedit, there are three settings in the registry correlated to changes in the speed setting of mouse control panel:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse\MouseSpeed
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse\MouseThreshold1
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse\MouseThreshold2

The MouseSpeed key maxes at 2 from control panel, and increasing this above 2 will cause the mouse to slow down, since it doesn't accept values above 2.

The mouse speed is a multiplier for MouseThreshold1 and MouseThreshold2, which correlate to acceleration.

To increase mouse sensitivity to maximum:

  1. Set MouseSpeed to 2.
  2. Set MouseThreshold1 to 0.
  3. Set MouseThreshold2 to 0.

You may want to set MouseThreshold1 and MouseThreshold2 a little higher than 0 if your pointer becomes a little too jumpy on the screen, but make sure that MouseThreshold2 is greater or equal to MouseThreshold1, and all three of these are integer values.

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    How do you refresh the settings? I tried with SendMessage, 0x1A,,,, ahk_id 0xFFF in autohotkey it didn't work. Also tried fooling around with the mouse dialog but it seemed to reset all my settings with values in dialog.
    – Ciantic
    Mar 5, 2013 at 9:32
  • Ever found the answer to this @ciantic ?
    – Nilzor
    Feb 5, 2014 at 7:35
  • I'm guessing it's just a restart will do it
    – markasoftware
    Oct 21, 2014 at 22:43
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    Given that the settings are under HKEY_CURRENT_USER, it's probably sufficient for reloading the settings to log the current user out and then log back in rather than a full system restart.
    – steamer25
    Jun 18, 2015 at 14:44
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    -1 because the answer does not discuss how to increase mouse sensitivity BEYOND the limit. The current settings you've identified refer to documentation about settings that are automatically set in the Registry by using the control panel, and hence do not discuss increasing beyond the limit
    – Dan Nissenbaum
    Sep 15, 2015 at 3:40
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+100

The existing answers either do not work in Windows 10 or have no meaning, belonging to the old days when DPI was around 400, and Microsoft was making efforts to enhance its IntelliPoint software beyond hardware capabilities. Even when they work, these configuration parameters may at most set mouse sensitivity to the hardware's maximum, but not beyond that.

Today, the mouse tracking technology has advanced to a point that it doesn't make any sense for the consumer to understand, examining so many variables from which very few are under user control.

To be convinced, you may listen to this video of a Logitech engineer explaining DPI:

enter image description here

Dots per inch (DPI) stays the single most important parameter under user control for changing the measure of sensitivity. Almost all mouses sold today have about 1600 DPI. Gaming mouses usually have 4000 DPI or more, and can be increased/decreased by pressing a button on the mouse.

DPI is more of a marketing ploy for gaming mouse. In fact, many competitive first-person shooter game players set their mouse DPI to 1200 or even 800, because lower DPI gives you precision/sensitivity.

The most one can do for increasing mouse sensitivity is to get a sophisticated high-DPI mouse with a sophisticated driver externalizing adjustable parameters and the ability to define multiple usage profiles to account for the different conditions when employing different software products. Such mouses can usually change profiles at the press of a button, thus changing mouse sensitivity (among others).

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    Well, FWIW, although the Regedit method didn't work for me, @Smi's solution with CustomCurve did; Simply increasing v1, v2, etc. by a factor of 3 sped up the mouse (some old generic HP mouse which I can only assume used generic drivers) far beyond the max limit. :) However, YMMV.
    – Matias
    Jul 25, 2020 at 23:53
  • Your answer didn't really show that the existing answer is of no use. The question simply is how can we move the pointer farther away when the mouse is moved for a specific distance. By changing the value in the registry( MouseSpeed, MouseThreshold1, MouseThreshold2), we could easily let the pointer move four times distance than usual. But the existing answer didn't let us move the distance more than four times.
    – Luk Aron
    Apr 25, 2021 at 17:21
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Just some tips on using CustomCurve:

  1. Scaling yn up will increase the cursor speed.

  2. Before adjusting yn, save the original config to disk using "Save to File":

    enter image description here

  3. To scale yn up a specified number of times, use the "Scaling/Exponent Tool":

    enter image description here

    Click "Scale Y *" will scale yn up 2 times:

    enter image description here

    Click "Write to Registry", then sign out and sign in again to see the effect:

    enter image description here

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  1. Run regedit.exe from the Windows search bar
  2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse
  3. Change MouseSensivity to 20 (10 = normal, 20 = twice as fast)
  4. Restart your PC
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  • 20 is the max, your answer is not what we want.
    – Luk Aron
    Apr 25, 2021 at 17:08
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After being unable to obtain the desired mouse pointer acceleration via Control Panel or by simply using the registry to increase MouseSpeed to 2, then by further experimentation with the above, I found that if I used Control Panel (Run control.exe) to reduce the mouse pointer speed to low, and then went to Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse and changed MouseSpeed to 2, and restarted C:\Windows\explorer.exe (I use Process Explorer to right click on it),
and then went back to Control Panel>Mouse and increased the mouse pointer speed to the highest, then that resulted in the most acceleration. Even though the registry (after F5 refresh) now says MouseSpeed is 1.

Do not ask me why this works!

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  • It resulted in the most acceleration, or the most speed?
    – Guillaume F.
    Jul 16, 2022 at 3:30
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On Windows 10 and a generic gaming mouse disabling "Enhance pointer precision" in the "Mouse Properties" menu (*) drastically increased the pointer's speed without any noticeable loss of precision.

(*) Open the Mouse Settings menu, then click Additional mouse option.

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