How To Disable Mouse Acceleration in Windows

If you have ever peeked inside controls options in pretty much any PC game, then you have undoubtedly seen an inconspicuous and seemingly irrelevant tick box somewhere in there – one that had “mouse acceleration” written next to it.

But what exactly is mouse acceleration? Can it help or harm your performance in games? How do you turn off mouse acceleration in the operating system?

All of those questions will be answered in this guide now.

What is Mouse Acceleration?

As the name implies, mouse acceleration creates a direct correlation between the distance your cursor moves and the speed with which the actual mouse is moved. In layman’s terms, the faster you move the mouse, the faster the cursor moves on the screen.

Advantages

Mouse acceleration is usually quite useful for office work or just regular web browsing. Essentially, it allows you to make the most of the movement space that you have available.

You have probably found yourself in the situation where you had to lift your mouse, move it to the center of the mouse pad and keep on moving the cursor in the same direction because you just don’t have enough physical space to “cover” your whole screen.

This is a commonly occurring problem if you prefer lower sensitivity settings.

Now, this is the exact sort of scenario that mouse acceleration aims to prevent: the movement of the cursor can either be short and precise or fast and zapping from one side of the screen to the other just based on how quickly you’re moving the mouse.

Disadvantages

Unfortunately, mouse acceleration can often have a detrimental effect on your gaming experience, and for several reasons:

• Movement inconsistency and lower accuracy
  If you are playing any shooter game, then aiming accuracy can be severely impacted by mouse acceleration. Since there is a direct correlation between the speed with which you move the mouse and the speed with which the camera moves, high-tension situations that need quick reactions will inevitably lead to your jerking the mouse with more force than usual and, in turn, likely missing your target.
• Lack of muscle memory development
  Muscle memory plays a vital role in any task that requires precise movement. It allows you to make these movements accurately and instinctively, without needing to think about them.
  How do you develop muscle memory for certain tasks? Simply, through repetition. However, the inconsistent movement response created by mouse acceleration does not allow you to develop muscle memory. As such, disabling mouse acceleration can lead to better, faster, and more accurate aiming in the long term.

How to Disable Mouse Acceleration in Windows 10

1. Finding mouse settings
   1. Open the control panel
   2. Open Hardware and Sound
   3. Open Devices and Printers
   4. Select your mouse in the “Devices” section
      NOTE: Your mouse may show up simply as “USB Device” or “Bluetooth Device”. If this happens, you will have to open mouse settings by right-clicking the relevant icon and selecting Mouse settings from the drop menu.

1. Finding acceleration options
   1. From the newly opened window, select the Pointer Options tab
   2. At the very top, you will see a section titled Motion
   3. Uncheck the Enhance pointer precision tick box located directly under the sensitivity slider
   4. Click OK or Apply, and you’re done!

Just like that, mouse acceleration is disabled in Windows 10, and you can enjoy precise and linear mouse movements both on your desktop and in games.

To be on the safe side, make sure to always uncheck the mouse acceleration box in every game that you play.