Speed Up Key Repeat Input on Your Mac

So I'm happy to be blogging again and I though I'd start by sharing a hack I ran across a couple of months ago.  It involves adjusting the OSX Key Repeat setting to a lower value that what the GUI allows.  This setting is great for developers like me who sometimes navigate through code using arrow keys or like to quickly delete something by holding down the delete key.

System Preferences > Keyboard

Now the GUI presently allows you to set Key Repeat to a minimum value of 2, which for many folks, doesn't seem to be fast enough. We can change the value to 1, but before we do, take note of your current setting with the following command.

jbisbee@beni$ defaults read NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat
30

Now to set the value to 1, we can use the following command. Unfortunately, you will need to reboot to have the change take affect.

jbisbee@beni$ defaults write NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat -int 1

In the event you don't like the result, simply run the command again with your initial value.

jbisbee@beni$ defaults write NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat -int 30

If someone knows the mac command to reinitialize, please share. :)