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I am using a MacBook Air 11" 2011 Model with Mac OS X Lion hooked up with a Cinema Display 27" and I am getting two different mouse tracking speeds (I am using a Apple Magic Mouse) when I move between the two screens in a two screen setup.

I have to move the mouse 20cm to move the cursor from one end of the 27" screen to the other.

However, I have to move the mouse 40cm to move the cursor from one end of the 11" screen to the other!

I can only adjust the mouse tracking speed in the system preferences, increasing it does make it faster on the 11" screen, but makes it too fast on the 27" screen...

Anyway I can fix this? This issue did not occur when I was running a MacBook Pro 13" when Snow Leopard and the same 27" screen.

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Noticed the same issue with my second monitor on osx lion when I upgraded my iMac. – Thomas Jul 23 '11 at 21:21
My problem was related to the refresh rate on my second monitor changing after the update to OSx Lion. – Thomas Jul 23 '11 at 21:33
I'm using a brand new MacBook Air 11" 2011 Model, didn't migrate, used the factory fresh installation, with a brand new Apple Cinema Display 27"... I'm pretty sure this is not a fault hardware or software issue... And considering its all apple (i.e. using Apple Magic Mouse), can't be compatibility issue... This must just be a gay new mouse tracking algo, is there a app to give more advanced options for mouse tracking... also to set different tracking speeds for screens. – cappuccino Jul 24 '11 at 11:13
I can see what is happening, they are making is so that the same hand movement results is the same 'proportional movement'... i.e. if it takes 20cm hand movement to move across the 27", it will take the same distance on a 11" screen, which makes no sense! it is impossible to move between screens since the tracking changes immediately on the cursor moving to the next screen! This never happened on Snow Leopard... possible to restore Snow Leopard tracking algo? – cappuccino Jul 24 '11 at 11:16

1 Answer

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I don't think you can. Read this article on TUAW:

that's because the mouse speed option cannot be set on a per-monitor basis. Mouse tracking is controlled as part of system defaults, in the Universal Access preferences pane.

The actual preference is called mouseDriverMaxSpeed and can range as an integer between 1 (lethargic) and 32 (zippy). Here's how you'd read the current setting from the command line:

defaults read com.apple.universalaccess mouseDriverMaxSpeed

Whatever number you set to feel right on one monitor will either feel draggy or hyper on the other.

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