The Mouse Acceleration Conflict
By default, Google Chrome relies on the operating system to interpret mouse movements. This means if you have “Enhance pointer precision” (mouse acceleration) enabled in Windows, Chrome uses that accelerated data to move your cursor across webpages. However, Chrome includes an experimental flag called “Enable raw input” (or “Enable raw draw” in some related contexts), which attempts to bypass the OS entirely and read the raw data directly from the mouse hardware.
While this sounds like it would reduce input lag, enabling raw input in Chrome often causes severe tracking issues. Users frequently report that their mouse suddenly feels floaty, completely ignores their carefully tuned DPI settings, or stutters wildly when trying to highlight text. If your mouse is behaving erratically exclusively within the Chrome browser, it is highly likely this flag has been enabled and needs to be turned off.
How to Disable Raw Mouse Input in Chrome
You must access Chrome’s experimental settings to force the browser to use standard OS mouse tracking.
- Open Google Chrome.
- Click inside the main address bar at the top of the browser.
- Type
chrome://flagsand press Enter. - A page titled “Experiments” will load.
- In the search bar at the top, type Enable raw input (or simply “raw input”).
- The specific flag will appear highlighted in yellow. Next to it is a dropdown menu.
- Click the dropdown menu and select Disabled.
- Chrome will prompt you to restart the browser for the change to take effect. Click the blue Relaunch button at the bottom of the screen.
Once Chrome reopens, it will immediately revert to using your operating system’s standard mouse drivers. Your tracking speed, acceleration, and precision will return to normal.