If you are not happy with the mouse wheel’s scrolling speed in Firefox, there is a quick and easy way for you to change the scrolling speed and override the system settings. The following trick is easy, but works differently for each OS and involves changing the about:config value.

In Linux (this solution is tested in Ubuntu) and Mac:

  1. Open a new tab in your Firefox browser and type “about:config“.

  2. In the Search bar, type:

  3. Double click on the entry and change the value from 5 to 60.

If 60 is too fast (or slow) for you, you can change to a value that is suitable for you. Generally, the higher the value, the faster the page will scroll.

  1. Close ths “about:config” tab and load a website. You should notice that the page’s scrolling speed has greatly increased.

The above trick is not applicable in Windows, but you can use the mousewheel.acceleration tricks (which is applicable in Linux and Mac as well)

You should see two entries in the list.

  1. Double click the “mousewheel.acceleration.start” entry and change the value to 1 or more (the value is the number of times the wheel is scrolled before the acceleration kicks in).

  2. Double click the “mousewheel.acceleration.factor” entry and change the factor to the speed you desire. The default factor is 10, which means your scrolling speed will increase by 10 times when the acceleration starts. You can change it to higher or lower, depending on your needs.

Note: If this trick causes issue to your mouse wheel scrolling, you can disable it by setting the “mousewheel.acceleration.start” entry back to “-1”

That’s it. This should increase your mouse scrolling speed in Firefox.

Image credit: Scrolling on wheel on computer mouse by BigStockPhoto

Damien Oh started writing tech articles since 2007 and has over 10 years of experience in the tech industry. He is proficient in Windows, Linux, Mac, Android and iOS, and worked as a part time WordPress Developer. He is currently the owner and Editor-in-Chief of Make Tech Easier.

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