KBDRATE(8)

✨ KBDRATE(8) ✨

Okay so this is the manual page for kbdrate, the tool that lets you tweak your keyboard's repeat rate and delay time 🎀⌨️

💖 NAME 💖

kbdrate - reset the keyboard repeat rate and delay time 🌸

🧚 SYNOPSIS 🧚

kbdrate [options...]

📝 DESCRIPTION 📝

Bestie, kbdrate is how you change the keyboard repeat rate and delay time 💅 The delay is how long you have to hold a key down before it starts repeating. Lowkey the most important thing to know 🫶

Running kbdrate with no options resets everything to the defaults. On Intel- and M68K-based systems that means a repeat rate of 10.9 characters per second (cps) and a delay of 250 milliseconds (ms). These are the IBM defaults, so they're the classic vibe 🦋 On SPARC-based systems, it resets the repeat rate to 5 cps and the delay to 200 ms ✨

🌈 OPTIONS 🌈

• -r, --rate=NUMBER — Sets the repeat rate to NUMBER cps 💜 On Intel-based systems the allowed range is 2.0 to 30.0 cps. Only certain specific values are possible, so the program picks the closest one to what you typed. The possible values (in characters per second) are:

2.0, 2.1, 2.3, 2.5, 2.7, 3.0, 3.3, 3.7, 4.0, 4.3, 4.6, 5.0, 5.5,
6.0, 6.7, 7.5, 8.0, 8.6, 9.2, 10.0, 10.9, 12.0, 13.3, 15.0, 16.0,
17.1, 18.5, 20.0, 21.8, 24.0, 26.7, 30.0.

On SPARC-based systems the allowed range is 0 (no repeat) to 50 cps 🙈

• -d, --delay=NUMBER — Sets the delay to NUMBER milliseconds 🍓 On Intel-based systems that's anywhere from 250 to 1000 ms, in 250 ms steps. On SPARC systems, you can pick anything between 10 ms and 1440 ms, in 10 ms steps ⭐
• -s, --silent — Silent mode 🤫 No messages get printed.
• -h, --help — Shows a help text 🎀
• -V, --version — Shows the version number and exits 🌸

💀 BUGS 💀

Not all keyboards support all rates, so don't be shocked if yours says no 🙈

Not all keyboards map the rates the same way either. Every keyboard is its own main character 👑

Setting the repeat rate on the Gateway AnyKey keyboard does not work. If someone with a Gateway figures out how to program the keyboard, please send mail to util-linux@math.uio.no 😭

All of this is super architecture dependent 🧚 Nowadays kbdrate first tries the KDKBDREP and KIOCSRATE ioctls. (The former usually works on an m68k/i386 machine, and the latter on SPARC.) When these ioctls fail, it falls back to an ioport interface.

📂 FILES 📂

• /etc/rc.local
• /dev/port

Okay that's the whole tea 🫶 This page is from the kbd source, dated 22 June 1994, so it's giving vintage. Stay hydrated and keep those keys repeating, bestie 💅✨