How to Turn Off Mouse Acceleration on Mac

macOS speeds the pointer up when you move the mouse fast and slows it down when you move carefully. Great for desktop work, terrible for aim: the same hand movement lands somewhere different every time. Games and precision design work want 1:1 movement — and how you get it depends on your macOS version.

macOS 14 Sonoma and 15 Sequoia: flip the toggle

Apple finally made this a checkbox:

1. Connect your mouse and open System Settings → Mouse.
2. Click Advanced… at the bottom of the pane.
3. Turn off Pointer acceleration.

That's it — movement is now linear: two inches of mouse travel moves the pointer the same distance whether you move slowly or flick. To undo, switch the toggle back on. No restart needed either way.

macOS 13 Ventura: one Terminal command

Ventura has no toggle, but the acceleration curve can be disabled by setting the scaling preference to −1:

# disable pointer acceleration
defaults write -g com.apple.mouse.scaling -1

# undo — remove the override, then re-set Tracking speed in System Settings
defaults delete -g com.apple.mouse.scaling

Log out and back in (or restart) for it to take effect. One important caveat: the Tracking speed slider writes to this same preference, so opening System Settings → Mouse and touching the slider later will silently re-enable acceleration. Set your speed first, run the command last, and re-run it after any slider visit.

Re-tuning after the change

Expect the pointer to feel sluggish at first — acceleration was doing real work carrying you across the screen on fast movements, and now it isn't. Three ways to get comfortable speed back without acceleration:

• Raise hardware DPI — if your mouse has DPI buttons or vendor software, this is the cleanest fix: more raw counts per inch, still perfectly linear.
• Raise tracking speed — on Sonoma/Sequoia the slider still works with acceleration off and simply scales the linear speed.
• In games — use the game's own sensitivity setting; many games also bypass macOS pointer handling entirely (“raw input”), which is why aim sometimes feels different in-game than on the desktop.

To verify it worked, do the before/after test: sweep the mouse 10 cm slowly, note where the pointer lands, then do the same sweep fast. With acceleration off, both sweeps travel the same on-screen distance.

Who should leave it on

Acceleration exists because it's genuinely good for desktop work — slow movements give pixel precision while fast flicks cross a 4K display without lifting the mouse. If you don't game and don't do drag-precision work, the default behavior is probably serving you well. And note the toggle governs mice only: the trackpad keeps its own feel, and third-party driver software (Logitech Options+, Razer Synapse) applies its own curves on top — if you use one, disable acceleration in one place only, or the settings will fight.

A middle path exists, too. If linear movement feels too extreme but the default curve too floaty, free utilities like LinearMouse let you shape the acceleration curve rather than just switching it off — worth a look if you bounce between design work and games. And whichever route you take, give your hands a few days before reverting: acceleration is deeply trained muscle memory, and the first day without it always feels broken. The verdict that matters is day three, when your aim has recalibrated and you can judge the trade honestly.

Now dial in the speed

With the curve gone, raw speed is the only variable left — see how to change mouse speed on Mac, including the Terminal route past the slider's maximum.