What is Angle Snapping on Mouse?

Angle snapping is a term that appears on many gaming mice’s websites. What does this mean? And why is it so bad for gaming? This page will provide all the information you need.

What is angle snapping exactly?

Some computer mice have a function called angle snapping. It is also known as mouse smoothing (or line straightening), and angle prediction. It detects when you want to draw straight lines with your mouse and corrects your mouse movements until they are in a straight line. Gaming mice that don’t support angle snapping are not equipped with it, or they can enable it.

Is my mouse able to angle snap?

Angle snapping occurs when your mouse sensor attempts to predict and smoothen your mouse movements by ignoring certain degrees of movement in another direction.

Open MS-Paint to check if your gaming mouse has been affected by angle snapping.

Now, draw a straight horizontal or vertical line. Angle snapping is a great option. This will make your line straighter as any slight movements are ignored. It will be nearly impossible to draw straight lines without it – even if you have a great gaming mouse. This image shows it all better.

The bottom lines were drawn without Angle Snapping enabled, but the ones above do have it. The bottom lines are filled with irregularities while the ones on the top have almost perfect straightness. The mouse smoothing “forces” your pointer to follow a straight line across the screen even though your movements are not perfectly straight.

The severity of line straightening depends on how severe it is.

What does this all mean for gaming?

Manufacturers go to great lengths in order to create flawless sensors for their gaming mice. This means that your mouse movements are not adjusted or straightened. This allows you to aim precisely at every pixel.

There are still many gaming mice (mostly very inexpensive) that can angle-snap enabled, but it is not listed anywhere. What does this mean for gaming?

The following scenario is possible.

Playing a shooter, you make a quick turn to the right using your mouse. You just saw an enemy’s head. You want your fine mouse movements and mouse clicks to register on the opponent’s head so that it lands on their heads.

If your mouse supports angle snapping, it will assume you want to draw straight lines. This is less ideal because your movement will now be “corrected”, to draw a straight line. This could cause you to miss your opponent just a few pixels.

You can turn the feature on in your companion software if you wish. It will be like night and day. Angle snapping enabled, it is difficult to pinpoint a point on my screen. The sensor wanders and wants to “correct” everything all the time.

This is a huge problem for gaming. It is not used by pro gamers and it doesn’t produce better results than raw input.

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Can Angle Snapping be disabled?

Modern gaming mice don’t have angle snapping because the sensors are perfect. They don’t have performance-limiting corrections such as smoothing.

This feature is usually not possible to disable on mice with the same feature. This is because you will need companion software.

Some manufacturers also offer the option to activate the smoothing function using the accompanying software. This is what you see with the SteelSeries mouse, for instance. The whole thing is, however, disabled by default.

It is important to avoid it, even on cheap gaming mice.

I hope that you now see why angle snapping is so bad for gamers.

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