How to change mouse DPI settings on Windows 10

People game on PCs. Some might prefer consoles, but others do prefer PCs. If you’re new to gaming, or you’ve been playing a while but never felt your mouse performed right during games, you might have been advised to change the DPI for the mouse. DPI is the somewhat technical term that’s used to describe how sensitive the mouse is. It is easier for end-users to understand what sensitivity is in terms of a point & click device than it is to understand DPI. That said, this little setting can help improve a mouse’s performance in a game. Whether you need to increase the DPI, or decrease it really depends on you.

Mouse DPI settings

This is useful for gamers however if you don’t game but are not entirely comfortable with your mouse’s performance, the settings we discuss here are worth going over.

Open the Settings app and go to the Devices group of settings. Select the Mouse tab. On the right, or somewhere at the bottom, look for an option called ‘Additional mouse options’ and click it.

A new window will open. This is the old Mouse settings that came from Windows 7 and 8/8.1. Microsoft hasn’t migrated them to the Settings app yet.

There are two settings that you need to change here. The first is the slider under ‘Motion’. This is basically the mouse sensitivity and it dictates how fast and how much screen space the cursor covers when you move the actual mouse. It will take a little trial and error to get it just right, but this is the setting you want to change first.

Under this slider is the ‘Enhance pointer precision’ option. It is usually enabled by default and it is meant to prevent clicks on empty spaces. Basically, it allows the OS to guess what you actually intended to click on even if the cursor was a few pixels away. For games, this is more a hindrance so disable it. I personally find that it isn’t all that useful for normal, non-gaming use. That’s about it.

A word about hardware

There are special mice made for gaming. They have a few extra buttons that can be mapped to specific functions and they usually come with their own app to manage them. If you have such a mouse, it is a good idea to use its own app to change the DPI settings. The option may or may not be there but that’s where you should check.

All mice are not created equal. Some support a higher DPI rate i.e., gaming mice, while others are for normal use. You can use a normal mouse to game but if you’re not satisfied with it and changing the settings doesn’t help, you might need to upgrade your hardware.

If your mouse is lagging in general, you should go over these tips to see what might be the problem.

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Fatima Wahab

Fatima has been writing for AddictiveTips for six years. She began as a junior writer and has been working as the Editor in Chief since 2014. Fatima gets an adrenaline rush from figuring out how technology works, and how to manipulate it. A well-designed app, something that solves a common everyday problem and looks

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