Over the years I’ve used a number of Linux distributions on desktop, for the most part things worked smoothly but there’s always been one big problem with all of the Linux distributions on laptops; the touchpad scroll speed is always way too fast. Whilst the scroll speed can be set in KDE settings, I’ve always been a Cinnamon/GNOME guy despite trying to like KDE!

The good news is that if you’re on Wayland this can be easily set using libinput-config. If you’re on Arch it’s available on the AUR, if you’re using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed it’s available on the OpenSUSE build service. If it’s not available in your distros repo you can clone the gitlab repo and build it yourself – https://gitlab.com/warningnonpotablewater/libinput-config

To get started on Arch (I use yay) simply run:

yay -S libinput-config

Once the install has completed

sudo nano /etc/libinput.conf

Add the following to the file:

scroll-factor=[number]

The default value is 1, so if you want to half the speed set it to 0.5, I found that 0.25 worked nicely on my ThinkPad. Once you’ve made the changes you need to reload your session, so log out, back in again and test it out!

Whilst it’s frustrating to have to set this, it’s worth noting that once it’s set you never need to do so again! This, in my opinion, is a big problem that GNOME really needs to address. The fact that KDE have been able to implement it clearly demonstrates that it’s possible from a technical standpoint.

At the time of writing the current version of GNOME is 46. I will circle back and update this article if GNOME ever implement this functionality within the GNOME settings application.