What Is Mouse Smoothing & Is It Good For Gaming?

Guide, Mouse

Mouse smoothing is an option where it delays and stretches out your mouse movement, which creates a smooth mouse movement.

To be exact, it delays your cursor/crosshair movement slightly, and make them “ease in” and “ease out”. As the result, the mouse looks like it’s moving smoothly.

It was originally made for older mice that did not have high polling rate like nowadays. Some mice only had 60 Hz polling rate, compared to 1000 Hz nowadays.

You can learn about polling rate here.

How It Affects Gaming

In gaming where precision and timing is very important, mouse smoothing should be turned off.

Obviously, you want the cursor/crosshair to go where you aim as quickly as possible. But mouse smoothing does the opposite of that – it delays it.

Even if you don’t have to be precise, it may feel awkward to have your mouse movements delayed.

Mouse Smoothing vs Acceleration

The terms “mouse smoothing” and “mouse acceleration” often gets used interchangeably, but there is a difference between them.

As written here, mouse acceleration is an option where how far the cursor moves depends on how fast you move your mouse.

Mouse smoothing will always delay and stretch out the mouse movements, no matter how fast the mouse is moving.

Hopefully this guide helped you learn about mouse smoothing, how it affects gaming, and how it’s different from mouse acceleration. Let us know what you think in the comment section!

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Author Info
Andrew is a lifetime gamer and a former amateur esports player. He has worked as the manager for teams such as the New York Excelsior and the Los Angeles Gladiators. Andrew has been mentioned in ESPN, Inven, The Ringer and other esports magazines and journals. andrew@gearrate.com
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