Mouse, keyboard and input latency
USB selective suspend and device polling
Power management on the port your mouse is plugged into
Last updated
Should you disable USB selective suspend?
USB selective suspend lets Windows put individual USB ports into a low-power state when the attached device is idle. For a mouse or keyboard being actively used it should never engage, but the Allow the computer to turn off this device setting on USB root hubs has a long history of causing peripherals to drop out or feel intermittent, and disabling it is a reasonable troubleshooting step.
Registry location and values
USB selective suspend setting
- Location
powercfg (not a registry edit)- Value name
USB selective suspend setting- Type
Power plan setting- Default
- Enabled on Balanced
| Value | What it does |
|---|---|
Enabled | Ports may be suspended when idle. |
Disabled | Ports stay powered. |
Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power
- Location
Device Manager → USB Root Hub → Power Management- Value name
Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power- Type
Per-device checkbox- Default
- Ticked
| Value | What it does |
|---|---|
Unticked | Prevents Windows from powering down this hub. |
What Windows actually does with this
Selective suspend targets the individual port rather than the whole controller, so an idle device can be suspended while others stay active. Resuming takes a short but non-zero time, and some devices resume poorly.
What it affects
Peripherals that intermittently disconnect, take a moment to respond after idle, or drop input after the machine has been idle. On laptops, battery life.
Is it worth changing?
Worth disabling as a troubleshooting step if you have a peripheral that behaves intermittently, and largely pointless otherwise. A mouse you are actively using is not idle and is not being suspended, so this is not a latency tweak for normal use. The per-device checkbox in Device Manager is the more targeted fix and is preferable to the global power plan setting.
What can go wrong
Slightly higher idle power draw. On laptops this is measurable over a working day.
How to undo it
Re-enable USB selective suspend in the power plan's advanced settings, and re-tick the Device Manager checkboxes.
Create a System Restore Point before editing the registry. Every setting on this page is reversible, but a restore point is the difference between undoing one change and reinstalling Windows.
Which Windows versions this applies to
All modern Windows versions.
USB selective suspend and device polling: common questions
Does this change my mouse polling rate?
No. Polling rate is negotiated by the device and its driver. Selective suspend governs whether an idle port is powered down, which is a different mechanism.
Sources
Does JINSHI Tweaks change this?
This page documents settings that correspond to the following toggles in JINSHI PC Tweaks: Disable USB Selective Suspend, Disable Network Adapter Power Saving, Wi-Fi Maximum Performance.
The reference above is written to be usable without the product. Everything here can be applied by hand for free. What the application adds is that the change is applied in one pass, a System Restore Point is created first, and each toggle can be reversed individually.