Question 1

What is mouse acceleration?

Accepted Answer

Mouse acceleration scales cursor travel based on how fast you move the mouse — a slow drag moves the cursor a short distance, a fast flick moves it disproportionately farther. Windows calls the feature Enhance Pointer Precision and ships it enabled by default. macOS applies a similar curve that cannot be fully disabled without third-party software. Acceleration helps Windows desktop navigation but breaks muscle memory in games where you rely on the same physical distance always producing the same on-screen rotation.

Question 2

How does this tool detect acceleration?

Accepted Answer

It plots observed cursor velocity against raw input magnitude on a scatter chart. With acceleration disabled the points form a tight diagonal line — every unit of physical movement maps to a constant number of pixels. With acceleration enabled the cloud curves upward at higher velocities because the OS multiplies the input by a speed-dependent factor. The tool fits a regression and reports the slope ratio between slow and fast moves; anything above about 1.15 indicates measurable acceleration.

Question 3

How do I turn off Windows Enhance Pointer Precision?

Accepted Answer

Open Settings, search for 'mouse settings', click 'Additional mouse settings', go to the Pointer Options tab, and uncheck 'Enhance pointer precision'. Click Apply. Re-run this test — the curve should flatten into a clean diagonal. While you are there, leave the pointer speed slider at the sixth notch from the left, which is the 1.0x multiplier; any other position resamples cursor coordinates and reintroduces non-linearity. The /mouse/dpi tool also assumes Enhance Pointer Precision is off for accurate readings.

Question 4

Does macOS have mouse acceleration?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and it is more aggressive than Windows. macOS applies a smoothing curve that cannot be disabled through System Settings — only the overall speed slider is exposed. Tools like LinearMouse, SteerMouse, or the open-source Mac Mouse Fix replace the curve with a true linear response. If you game on macOS and rely on muscle memory, install one of those. This test will show a clear curve on stock macOS regardless of which mouse you use.

Question 5

Will using a vendor driver bypass OS acceleration?

Accepted Answer

No. Logitech G Hub, Razer Synapse, and similar drivers expose their own sensitivity and DPI settings but still send cursor coordinates through the OS pointer pipeline, so OS acceleration is applied on top. The only way to bypass it entirely is for the application to use Raw Input (most FPS games do) or pointer-lock with raw input enabled (used by /mouse/accuracy). For desktop use, acceleration always applies.

Question 6

Why do some pros prefer a little acceleration?

Accepted Answer

A small minority of FPS players use the Razer or SteelSeries acceleration profiles intentionally so micro-adjustments are slow and flicks are fast, effectively giving them two sensitivities. The trade-off is that consistency suffers — the same flick angle requires different physical movements depending on speed, which collapses muscle memory under pressure. Outside of a handful of high-sens Quake-era players, the modern consensus is that linear input wins. Check /mouse/accuracy after toggling to feel the difference.

Acceleration.