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I find I have to scroll a lot to move the text of my page compared to Windows where I can choose the speed of the mouse wheel.

Does Ubuntu have a similar utility and if so how can I access it?

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5 Answers 5

Reset to default
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This solution worked for me with Ubuntu 18.04:

http://www.webupd8.org/2015/12/how-to-change-mouse-scroll-wheel-speed.html

sudo apt-get install imwheel   
cat > ~/.imwheelrc
".*"
None,      Up,   Button4, 8
None,      Down, Button5, 8
Control_L, Up,   Control_L|Button4
Control_L, Down, Control_L|Button5
Shift_L,   Up,   Shift_L|Button4
Shift_L,   Down, Shift_L|Button5

(the 8 at the end of the second and third line are the acceleration numbers, 3 is default)

Then add imwheel --kill --buttons "4 5" as a startup application:

startup screenshot

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  • 5
    This worked for me, thanks; but why is it necessary? Is there a scroll-wheel-speed bug in Ubuntu 18?
    – logidelic
    Jan 22, 2019 at 18:27
  • Imwheel was working perfectly for me. But then I have bought a new mouse with buttons 4 and 5. Using your command it kills them. Is there any other method? Kind regards,
    – Le Nass
    Jan 26, 2019 at 22:44
  • use xev to find out your mouse's actual button numbers for the wheel?
    – Tanachat
    Feb 8, 2019 at 7:13
  • Work fine, but seems it affects my touchpad scrolling speed as well.
    – Alexey Demin
    Oct 17, 2020 at 1:23
  • The difficulty of accomplishing such a basic task is embarrassing for the linux developers.
    – Antonio Sesto
    Mar 29, 2022 at 7:52
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May seem obvious but there is also the possibility of increasing scroll on a per-application basis, which may be all you need.

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  • Bad idea if you have to do that on some applications (for example, firefox + libreoffice + gedit) because it's a lot of repetition, instead of speading it with OS parameters. This option is good to use if you want to slow down / increase that scroll speed in a particular app
    – damadam
    Nov 15, 2019 at 15:55
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    @damadam Well but maybe you're not trying to actually deal with the entire OS in the first place, maybe it's just a problem you have with 1 or 2 particular applications. That was the point of my answer.
    – Andrew
    Nov 15, 2019 at 19:45
  • Yes, but how? Are you talking application-specific? I haven't seen this as an option in most programs.
    – starbeamrainbowlabs
    Mar 5, 2021 at 15:53
  • 2
    @starbeamrainbowlabs The application would provide it. A good example is Firefox about:config + mousewheel.min_line_scroll_amount. Also any half-decent PC video game (that uses scrolling) ever.
    – Andrew
    Mar 5, 2021 at 22:59
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Cannot comment (only 31 of 50 needed reputation), so I have to write this as an answer:

imwheel works for Ubuntu 16.04, but the above answers destroys the Ctrl+Mousewheel from zooming text, which for some of us is commonly used.

The solution is to provide it for both Ctrl keys:

".+"
    @Exclude

".*chrome.*"
    @Priority=100
    None,      Up,   Button4, 3
    None,      Down, Button5, 3
    Shift_L,   Up,   Shift_L|Button4
    Shift_L,   Down, Shift_L|Button5
    Shift_R,   Up,   Shift_R|Button4
    Shift_R,   Down, Shift_r|Button5
    Control_L, Up,   Control_L|Button4
    Control_L, Down, Control_L|Button5
    Control_R, Up,   Control_R|Button4
    Control_R, Down, Control_R|Button5

The Exclude section is required so that it does NOT affect other apps (no idea why it would, but it does).

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Configuring imwheel does not work well for me in Ubuntu 20.04. Changing ~/.imwheel from

None,      Up,   Button4, 1
None,      Down, Button5, 1

to

None,      Up,   Button4, 3
None,      Down, Button5, 3

gives (me) a bad scrolling experience because the faster scrolling is achieved by scrolling in "jumps", not in a floating, faster manner.

However, I have a Logitech Wireless MX Master mouse and use Solaar (v1.0.1) to configure it. When configuring the mouse in Solaar, I can select "Wheel resolution" which gives me a much better and faster floating scroll experience.

screenshot of Solaar configuration

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On my ThinkPad, to change the scroll speed using the TrackPoint, inspired by other answers here, I did

xinput list

and found the TrackPoint to be id 14, so continued with

xinput list-props 14

under which I saw libinput Scrolling Pixel Distance. I set this using

xinput set-prop 14 'libinput Scrolling Pixel Distance' x

where x could be values between 10 and 50 (I experimented), lower values meaning faster scrolling.

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