How to set keyboard repeat delay and speed in Ubuntu Gnome 16.10?

Question

In previous versions I could tweak the keyboard repeat delay and speed by going to Settings → Keyboard → Typing. Now in Ubuntu GNOME 16.10 (with GNOME 3.20.2) that panel seems to be missing.

How can I configure those settings in this version?

score 208 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 07 '20 at 16:32

208

These settings are under Settings → Universal Access → Typing → Repeat Keys. You have to click the Repeat Keys row item, which brings up a pop-up dialog with two settings: Delay and Speed.

This works in Ubuntu 17.04 and above.

In older versions of Ubuntu, the Speed setting worked in reverse: the lower the speed, the faster the repeat rate. This is no longer the case.

edited Oct 07 '20 at 16:32

BeastOfCaerbannog

14,585

answered Nov 05 '16 at 22:25

Loque

3,717

But that does not allow you to increase the speed, neither do the gsettings commands that used to. Did Gnome remove this? – ryanpcmcquen Feb 25 '17 at 16:26
7

Have you clicked on Repeat keys? Because a menu appears allowing you to set the speed. – Loque Feb 28 '17 at 19:21
I have it on, I didn't see the hidden menu, I will try tonight. Hopefully it can still be set through gsettings. I wish the Gnome team wouldn't move settings with every release ... – ryanpcmcquen Feb 28 '17 at 19:34
6

OK, so apparently my gsettings command did successfully set Delay to its lowest setting, and Speed to its highest setting. None the less, the repeat rate is significantly slower than it was in past versions of Gnome. Why enforce these arbitrary restrictions? – ryanpcmcquen Mar 01 '17 at 02:46
2

@Loque I just checked on Ubuntu 17.04 and it is under Settings > Universal Access > Typing > Repeat keys, exactly the same as 16.04. You may want to fix your answer. – Lucio Paiva Jul 24 '17 at 22:41
1

Yeah Ubuntu added another 300 milliseconds to key delay and slowed down the key repeat by about 30 percent. I fiddled around with the settings, and to make it the same as before, you need roughly 290ms delay and 32 repeats/second to make it same as before. I see the pythonic John Cleesian methodologies are still in full effect. – Eric Leschinski Mar 11 '18 at 21:50
22

Bad interface change. "Repeat keys" shows just "On". It is more than natural that the user will think that clicking on it will turn it "Off", when in fact it opens a new window! And who would've thought, the configuration we're looking for is right there. Btw, had the same issue with Ubuntu 18.04. – Lucio Paiva May 01 '18 at 19:07
21

Great UI design. Why would you put keyboard settings in Settings->Keyboard? Haha that'd be stupid! We should hide them in accessibility under what looks like a toggle-button but isn't instead... Edit: Speed is backwards? Oh my god someone designed this?? – Timmmm Oct 28 '18 at 18:56
3

Please upvote this bug so the GNOME maintainers understand how unfortunate these design decisions were. – Dan Dascalescu Dec 31 '18 at 18:31
WHERE IS SETTINGS? It does not exist anymore. – mathtick Jul 28 '19 at 10:37
1

Speed now seems the opposite of the answer, as in, the higher the speed, the faster the repeat rate. (3 months ago when I installed on a different machine, speed was indeed backward) – Tyler Collier Jul 27 '20 at 01:11
@mathtick press the windows key (or the command key if you have a mac keyboard) and type "settings" – Oct 07 '20 at 18:59

patraulea · Answer 2 · 2018-10-24T08:40:57.657

56

On ubuntu 14.04 and up this will survive after reboot:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.keyboard repeat-interval 30
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.keyboard delay 250

edited Oct 24 '18 at 08:40

answered May 02 '18 at 12:30

patraulea

681

11

This is much better for portable configurations than settings menu, because you can set the exact values instead of blindly adjusting a slider – siikamiika Dec 05 '18 at 08:43
Thanks! And FWIW, this should work on any OS using Gnome. – Rahul Rajaram Dec 08 '18 at 07:40
What units are those numbers? Seem like delay is milliseconds? But repeat-interval seems to be frequency (hz)? A higher number repeats the keypress faster. E.g. A value of 50 is faster than 30. – MiniGod Mar 10 '21 at 12:48
Yes, repeat interval is hz and delay is milliseconds. – patraulea Mar 12 '21 at 13:44
This is a much better answer – blueether Jan 30 '22 at 18:23

Ondra Žižka · Answer 3 · 2022-09-12T15:28:55.743

33

If nothing else works, and if you are using the Xorg (i.e. not Wayland), try running xset r rate 220 40 from a console.

xset r rate <milliseconds_before_repeating> <repetitions_per_second>

See man xset for more info:

If the server supports the XFree86-Misc extension, or the XKB extension, then a parameter of 'rate' is accepted and should be followed by zero, one or two numeric values. The first specifies the delay before autorepeat starts and the second specifies the repeat rate. In the case that the server supports the XKB extension, the delay is the number of milliseconds before autorepeat starts, and the rate is the number of repeats per second. If the rate or delay is not given, it will be set to the default value.

For me, the HID layer got broken in some way and config GUI didn't work, gsettings didn't work, only xset worked.

This solution however is not persistent - will disappear on restart (unless added to ~/.bashrc).

edited Sep 12 '22 at 15:28

answered Mar 12 '18 at 18:53

Ondra Žižka

3,738

+1 Lubuntu 18.04.2 uses this method instead. See file ~/.config/autostart/LXinput-setup.desktop – ATorras Apr 17 '19 at 15:48
best solution to my problem, as i'm using a window manger without a desktop environment. this line is very handy. – Boson Bear Jul 07 '20 at 23:01
perfect, it works everywhere ! – Prokop Hapala Sep 12 '22 at 14:05

seems not work in U22 anymore:

xset r 10 10                                                  
xset:  unknown option run

– alex_1948511 Apr 22 '23 at 18:59

score 1 · Answer 4 · edited Sep 12 '22 at 15:33

I'm a Ubuntu 18.04.3 User.... and not a techie. I tried changing the kdrate in terminal. I was told it had changed, but it didn't change the slow keyboard input.

This low tech method worked for me:

Go to "Show Applications", where there's an "InputMethod" utility, which has a keyboard as the icon. Open this.... ignore the warnings. Select "Yes" then you are presented with a list of options. The one which worked for me is "auto activate IM with @mark for most locales". You need to reboot your PC/laptop.

Then you can go to "Settings", "Typing", and then click on "repeat keys" and "cursor blinking". Both these options have sliders which you can use to speed up and slow the keyboard and key strokes.

I tried looking at the Keyboard Documentation. I didn't understand it, so I hope this answer works for Ubuntu users like me.

Hi! I followed your steps but still didn't get those sliders you mention. — , Oct 07 '19 at 09:32

How to set keyboard repeat delay and speed in Ubuntu Gnome 16.10?

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