How to Disable Mouse Acceleration in Ubuntu 16.04

Last Updated on March 23, 2018

I don’t really understand why the option to adjust mouse acceleration is not available in Ubuntu. The distro which claims to be the easiest to use among the gazillions of others in the ground.

It is such a simple thing and useful thing to add in Settings but release after release, it has been missing in all of the Ubuntu versions. Of course, being a Linux based distro, Ubuntu has all the nitty gritty config files which we can change to our liking.

ubuntu mouse acceleration

The frustration on the first paragraph isn’t to make to make you feel like Ubuntu is not a usable distro in itself. In fact, it is actually the one I use day to day. This issue of Mouse acceleration is, however quite frustrating to me. Upon digging a few old documents and forums like Reddit, I did find the fix for this.

Disable Mouse Acceleration in Ubuntu 16.04

To change the mouse acceleration in Ubuntu 16.04, all we have to do is add some text to the mouse config .conf file inside the usr/share/x11/xorg.conf.d folder. Let us get to the steps for doing so:

  • While on the desktop, press Ctrl + Alt + T to open the Terminal.
  • In the terminal, type sudo gedit /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-mouse.conf and press Enter. This will open the 90-mouse.conf file in gedit (the text editor) in super user mode.
  • In the opened file, copy and paste the following code and save the file.
Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "mouse"
    MatchIsPointer "on"
    Option "AccelerationProfile" "-1"
    Option "AccelerationScheme" "none"
EndSection
  • Restart your PC and enjoy the usable mouse again.

In the above steps, what I did was to edit the 90-mouse.conf file inside the X11 server which manages the display on Ubuntu and similar distros. The option named AccelerationScheme sets the mouse acceleration to none which in turn disables the acceleration. You will, of course, see the changes working only after a restart.

(source)

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Written by Utkarsh

Utkarsh Bhatt is a certified tech expert and software engineer for a Fortune 500 Company. He was born in 1995, making him one of the oldest members of the team at EFX. Utkarsh loves solving technical issues and is always the first to jump on any problem that needs solving. When he’s not coding or debugging, he enjoys playing video games (especially Super Smash Bros.) and watching cartoons.

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7 thoughts on “How to Disable Mouse Acceleration in Ubuntu 16.04”

  1. Do not follow the advice in this article. It will stall your computer on boot. Proper code syntax uses indentations for nesting, which the article left out.

    The correct file edit is:

    Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "mouse"
        MatchIsPointer "on"
        Option "AccelerationProfile" "-1"
        Option "AccelerationScheme" "none"
    EndSection

    TO FIX THE STALL:
    –Alt+F2 to access the TTY
    –sudo nano /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-mouse.conf
    (Delete the changes, then save/overwrite file)
    –sudo reboot

    Please disregard my corrected file edit. The comment formatting doesn’t show indentations.

    To see the proper formatting, go to the original source advice here:
    https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/4vxvhf/you_should_be_able_to_easily_disable_mouse/

    Reply
    • The email notification that I got for this comment has the correct indentation. It looks like Wordpress doesn’t like indents anywhere. Thanks for letting me know. I’m updating the article.

      Reply
      • Thanks for making the edits. I don’t know if you have the power to edit comments, but if you can please remove the segment I wrote about the correct file edit. It suffers from the same formatting issues, and could mislead people to make the same errors.

        If you can’t make edits, then please delete the comment entirely. Thanks!

        Reply
  2. Just wanted to let you know that I really appreciate this little workaround.

    Since I natively installed Ubuntu 18.04(and now running 19.10) on my carry-everywhere Ideapad, I’ve been cursing this damn distro for not having a on/off switch for mouse acceleration.

    Thanks a lot, you just made my day!

    Reply

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