[Tip] Change Keyboard Repeat Delay and Repeat Rate in Windows

This small tip will help you in customizing keyboard repeat delay and repeat rate in Windows operating system to improve your typing and reading experience on your computer system.

In this article, we’ll learn what are these repeat delay and repeat rate and how can these 2 features help in improving our typing experience in Windows.

I’m using this trick since many years in all Windows versions and believe me once you modify these 2 keyboard features specially “Repeat Delay”, you’ll really feel that the cursor inside documents is moving faster and there is literally no delay while typing repeated characters.

What are Keyboard Repeat Delay and Repeat Rate Options in Windows?

In simple words, Repeat delay is the time period between you press a key on your computer keyboard and Windows starts typing the character inside the program. Let’s understand with an example! You press and hold a key on your keyboard “L”. As soon as you press the key, Windows will start typing “L” character inside the opened program. But there will be a few milliseconds delay between pressing the key and the typing starts. This delay time is called “Keyboard Repeat Delay”.

Similarly, Repeat Rate is the rate which is used by Windows to type repeated characters. In previous example, when we pressed “L” key and Windows started typing “L” character after a few millisecond delay (repeat delay). Now repeat rate decides and tells Windows how quickly should it type rest of the characters followed by the first character.

So you see if we decrease Repeat Delay and increase Repeat Rate, we can force Windows to type repeated characters faster and quicker.

The same thing applies to arrow keys navigation. We all use arrow keys on our keyboard to navigate inside documents. Since Arrow key is also a key, Repeat Delay and Repeat Rate also apply to its navigation. If we change both the features, it’ll also make arrow keys moving faster while navigating.

Gamers can also take benefit of this trick to improve their gaming experience.

How to Customize Keyboard Repeat Delay and Repeat Rate in Windows?

Following steps will help you in changing keyboard repeat delay and repeat rate in all Windows versions:

1. Press WIN+R keys together to launch RUN dialog box, type control keyboard and press Enter. It’ll open Keyboard Properties box.

Alternatively, you can open Keyboard properties using classic Control Panel window (control.exe command).

2. On “Speed” tab, you’ll see sliders to customize Repeat Delay and Repeat Rate properties present under “Character repeat” section.

Repeat Delay can be set to Long or Short and Repeat Rate can be set to Slow or Fast.

For best experience, move the slider of Repeat Delay to Short and Repeat Rate to Fast.

You can test the output immediately in the same Keyboard properties window. There is a text box given to test the selected repeat delay and repeat rate settings.

Once finalized, click on Apply and OK buttons.

Now type inside a document or navigate using arrow keys and you’ll find noticeable change in repeated characters typing and arrow key movement.

BONUS TIP: Change Repeat Delay and Repeat Rate Using Registry Editor

Advanced users can also modify Registry to customize keyboard repeat delay and repeat rate. Go to following key in regedit:

In right-side pane, look for KeyboardDelay and KeyboardSpeed strings. Both strings can be modified to customize keyboard repeat delay and repeat rate respectively.

You can change value of KeyboardDelay to any between 0-3 (0 shortest, 3 longest). Default value is 1.

Similarly, you can set value of KeyboardSpeed to any between 0-31 (0 slowest, 31 fastest). Default value is 31.

Also Check:

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