Faster arrow-key repeat for long documents

When you're threading the cursor through a forty-page report or a long spreadsheet column, holding the Down arrow at the default rate is a genuine time sink — you can watch it inch along. Arrow keys use the same system repeat rate as everything else, so speeding it up fixes it: set KeyRepeat and InitialKeyRepeat, or drag the two Keyboard sliders, then log out. Jump-navigation shortcuts get you there even faster.

Speed up the arrow repeat rate

1. Open System Settings → Keyboard.
2. Drag Key Repeat to Fast so held keys fire quickly.
3. Drag Delay Until Repeat to Short so movement starts the instant you press.
4. Log out and back in to apply the change everywhere.

For documents, the Delay Until Repeat half is the one you feel most — it's the beat between "press Down" and "start moving," and a short delay is what makes the cursor feel like it's tracking your finger. To set exact numbers, or go beyond the slider, use Terminal:

# fast repeat, short initial delay
defaults write NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat -int 2
defaults write NSGlobalDomain InitialKeyRepeat -int 15

# undo — restore the macOS defaults
defaults delete NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat
defaults delete NSGlobalDomain InitialKeyRepeat

Lower values are faster; both are measured in units of roughly 15ms. Log out and back in afterward, since apps read the rate at launch. The behaviour is the same on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia.

Jump instead of holding

A fast repeat helps, but for real distance you want to leap, not scroll. In most text apps:

• Option + Left/Right — move by whole words instead of characters.
• Command + Left/Right — jump to the start or end of the line.
• Command + Up/Down — jump to the very top or bottom of the document.
• Fn + Up/Down — Page Up and Page Down, a full screen at a time.

Hold Shift with any of these and you select as you go. Reserve the held arrow key for nudging a line or two; use these to cover the long stretches. See our guide to Page Up and Page Down on Mac for the full set.

Select whole ranges while navigating

Once the cursor moves fast, selecting large blocks becomes the next bottleneck. Our guide to text-selection keyboard shortcuts on Mac pairs the jump keys with Shift so you can grab a paragraph, a line, or a whole document without touching the trackpad.