Linux Mint: How to Enable Key Debouncing

One of the issues that keyboards can face is “key bouncing”. When a key is pressed or released, the spring used to push it back up into its default position can cause the key to bounce at both the bottom and top of its movement. When a key is pushed down, this bouncing effect can be enough for the electrical connection that registers the key as being pressed to be broken before the key is firmly pressed to the bottom. The process of removing these extremely rapid keypresses is called “debouncing” and it can make the difference between being usable or not for some keyboards.

If you’re using Linux Mint and you notice that you’re having issues where keypresses are being registered multiple times, you may want to enable key debouncing. To enable key debouncing you need to go into the accessibility settings, by pressing the Super key, then typing “Accessibility” and hitting enter.

Tip: The “Super” key is the name that many Linux distributions use to refer to the Windows key or the Apple “Command” key, while avoiding any risk of trademark issues.

Once, you’re in the accessibility settings, switch to the “Typing assistance” tab, and click the bottom slider “Ignore fast duplicate keypresses” to the “On” position.

The “Acceptance delay” slider allows you to configure how quickly the key can be pressed a second time. The default value, roughly two-fifths of the way along the bar is too aggressive for most users. In fact, as the bouncing effect usually takes place over a matter of milliseconds, much faster than you can double press the key intentionally, you can generally set the acceptance delay to the minimum value to prevent debouncing while not affecting the general typing experience.

Users with shaky hands and tremors may find that extending the acceptance delay helps them to avoid double key presses. If this setting is pushed too far, however, you may struggle to intentionally type double letters. For example, the allowable delay between duplicate key presses at the maximum value is roughly one second.