What is Angle Snapping?

When reading mouse reviews or press packages for mice you’re bound to encounter some terms which can be difficult to understand if no one has explained to you what they mean. ‘Angle snapping’ is one of them. You’ve probably heard that it’s bad, but what is it exactly, and why is it bad?

Angle snapping explained


A modern computer mouse is an incredibly accurate piece of equipment. Compared to the trackballs of old, even a cheap office mouse can track movement with seemingly pixel perfect precision. A regular screen is made up of thousands of pixels though, and human’s aren’t inherently flawless.

Ever tried to draw a straight line or a perfect circle? Unless you’ve practiced a lot it’s nearly impossible to do it freehand. The same goes for when we’re using a mouse. If you opened up Paint right now and you’d try to draw a pixel perfect straight line you’d probably fail, assuming you own a (good) gaming mouse or a mouse without angle snapping.

You’d fail because of the fact that drawing a completely straight line is practically impossible for most humans on their first attempt. Angle snapping can help you with that. It ‘predicts’ (see also: mouse smoothing) when you want to make a straight line, and artificially keeps your pointer going in a straight line on the screen, even though your actual movements aren’t straight at all.

Why angle snapping is bad for gaming


Manufacturers go to great lengths in order to implement flawless sensors in their gaming mice. That’s for a reason. If you’ve got pixel perfect aim (which is something we all aspire to have) you don’t want any software interfering with the way you’re moving your mouse around.

If you’re (for example) making a quick swipe to the right with your crosshairs and you encounter an enemy who suddenly pops out his head you’ll want your little micro corrections to actually get registered so that your cursor ends up on the head of said enemy. If your mouse has angle snapping it might think you’re wanting to draw a straight line, causing it to ‘correct’ your movement to form a line, thus making you miss that all-important headshot on those few pixels of enemy head you can see.

Most modern gaming mice don’t have angle snapping, as the sensors which are used in the quality products nowadays are all flawless sensors, meaning that they do not feature any performance-limiting corrections such as angle snapping.

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klean

i think angle snapping is a great option, majority of professional csgo players play with 400dpi, out of habit and to increase aiming stability adding angle snapping option is bad at 400dpi because its effect is accentuated. for players who use 800dpi it is very beneficial because it combines the responsiveness of the sensor with better aiming stability

Gavin Lobo

Many users don’t even know if the Angle snapping is ON on their mouse. But if someone is playing with Angle Snapping ON for a long time and getting great results then your muscle memory have developed accordingly. Now, if you change it then you might have some issues while playing games like Counter strike. So when a user switch the Angle snapping ON or OFF, at least spend 24+ hours so that the muscle memory get used to it.

sophie

msucle memory doesn’t exist when using a mouse.

Carnivore

your just plain wrong. There is msucle memory in every single task we do. Mouse movement is one of the most important things a competitive player needs to zero in on to hit shots.

breddit

Can’t believe someone typed something so truly stupid. Muscle memory exists literally every time you do literally anything that involves moving literally anything.

Justin

I tried angle snapping. Regarding your aim you’re better off using it. If you’re spraying like in csgo it is not going to work but with a little practice, it just might help. ghub (Logitech software) it works for most mouse. Angle snapping does not work on on-board memory.

Max

Different things work for different people but almost no professional player (and these are the players who should know a thing or two about aim) prefers angle snapping since it can be awfully inconsistent.

Shahid

i want to test it out is there a software i can use that gives me angle snapping i have a Logitech g 402

Max

There probably is but we’re not aware of any software from the top of our heads. Google is probably your best bet.

Shadow

Use povohat mouse customizable accel program it has angle snapping as well as a few more fetures.

Briareos

Using Angle snapping in my Asus M5 only for work, Game profiles with turned off, but anyway, I am crab, so no matter)

Max

Sensors initially had all of these things included to make them easier to use for things like work (you don’t need a pixel perfect sensor for most office work) so it’s definitely not strange that you like to have it on for work! Luckily there are now dedicated gaming sensors that don’t have any of that stuff (or have it as something optional) so that people can choose. The best of both worlds!

Haan

I just tried to play with angle snap on, my aim got better a bit

Max

Well it’s different for everyone, but in general having unpredictable stuff such as angle snapping activated isn’t a good idea. That said: if it works for you, then great!

arcade

ive been aim training while inadvertently having angle snapping on. discovered it while double checking some setings in iCue and turned it off to see if i notice much of a difference. immediately noticed a significant impact.