Let’s talk about everything you need to know about Mouse Angle Snapping.
Gaming mice can be quite complicated with all these different terms: DPI, Sensitivity, Mouse Acceleration, Polling Rate, Smoothing, Lift-Off Distance, and much more. There are just too many terms that make gaming mice and optimization quite complicated.
I’ve made a task to myself to explain these topics as clearly and thoroughly as possible so you could squeeze every advantage you can. So let’s talk about Mouse Angle Snapping.
What Is Angle Snapping?
Angle Snapping is a feature in which the mouse hardware predicts mouse movements and smoothens the path. It ignores little deviations in the mouse movement and adjusts them, which causes the input to be smoother. Helpful when navigating in Windows, but terrible for gaming.
Try and draw a perfectly straight line in Microsoft Paint. Can you do it? The answer is probably no. It will never be perfect, right? This is how it probably looks:
It is natural and imperfect.
With Angle snapping enabled, the mouse hardware will smooth out the line and will ignore tiny deviations of my human error. Let’s see the result:
Perfect.
Do you see the difference? With angle snapping enabled, I’ve created perfectly straight lines with the help of the hardware.
Angle snapping is a feature that corrects human imperfections and smoothes out the raw mouse input. It ignores little deviations in mouse movements which causes the input to be smoother.
Should you use it? Does it have any use cases for gaming?
Should You Use Angle Snapping?
Angle snapping is not recommended when gaming. Gaming requires a high amount of accuracy and precision. With angle snapping on, your mouse may ignore some micro adjustments and mouse movements you do throughout the match, which will reduce your accuracy.
Take a look at this picture:
As you can see, with angle snapping, our mouse movement gets altered and smoother, which messes up our aim and causes us to die to this scary ghost!
But, with angle snapping off, we easily get the kill because of the raw input and zero alterations to our mouse movement.
It is so important to be able to precisely and accurately track your mouse movements. We, gamers, spend dozens of dollars to make sure our mouse and mousepad are perfectly tracking our mouse movements.
Turning off features like angle snapping or mouse smoothing mess up our aim because they interfere with the raw mouse input.
As a general thumb rule, it is recommended not to use any software or hardware features that interfere with the raw mouse input.
Why Angle Snapping Is Bad For Gaming?
Angle Snapping is terrible for gaming because gaming requires high precision and accuracy, and angle snapping can lower our precision. It tweaks our aim to be smoother in the cost of accuracy.
So now you know that you should not use Angle snapping. How to make sure that you do not have it on?
Does My Mouse Have Angle Snapping?
The easiest way to check whether you have angle snapping enabled is by attempting to draw a straight line in Microsoft Paint. If your line is unusually smooth and looks too perfect, you probably have this on. If it seems natural and curvy, then it is off.
- Type “Paint” in the search bar.
- Click on the brush-up top.
- Attempt to draw a smooth, straight line.
- Perfect, unnatural, and too straight: You probably have this feature enabled!
- Imperfect, natural, and a bit curvy: You probably have this feature disabled!
Can you tell which one is with angle snapping and which one is without? You can probably tell. Hint: The left one is with angle snapping enabled!
Another way of checking is through the mouse software. Go into settings and try and find if you have this feature enabled. Some mice will have it on their settings page and some won’t. For example, the Logitech G Pro does not have Angle snapping as a feature.
But it is worth a shot. Go into your mouse software and look for this option.
- If you have a Razer mouse, you can find it in the Razer Synapse.
- If you have a Logitech mouse, you can find it in the GHUB.
- If you have a SteelSeries mouse, you can find it in the SteelSeries Engine.
How To Turn Angle Snapping Off
You can turn angle snapping off through the mouse software. Go into your mouse software and search for settings. You will see a checkbox for Angle Snapping. Make sure to leave it unchecked.
If your mouse is too old or generally low-quality, you may be unable to change this setting. That’s why I recommend investing in a high-quality one with a flawless sensor without any hardware interpretations.
I generally recommend the most used gaming mouse in esports, and that is the Logitech G Pro. (Review).
But, feel free to check out What Gaming Mice Do Professional FPS Players Use? – Top 5 Gaming Mice In 2022.
Do Pros Use Angle Snapping?
Professional esports players do not use angle snapping. This is because games require a high amount of accuracy and precision. Therefore, using software or hardware that interferes with the raw input from the mouse is generally not recommended as it lowers gamers’ precision.
Not even pro esports players use angle snapping. Neither should you!
Final Words
So now you should know what angle snapping is and what is generally considered the best setting. You might also like these similar articles:
Thanks for reading, and I will see you next time! Keep improving beasts!
