How to Set Your Mouse Sensitivity
Sensitivity means nothing alone, eDPI only works within one game, and cm/360 is the number that actually transfers. Three tools, in the order you need them.
The tools in this guide
All free, no signup. Each one has a printable sheet too.
- eDPI CalculatorDPI times in-game sensitivity. It's the only number that compares two players' aim - and the one that tells you what sens to use after changing DPI.
- Mouse Sensitivity Converter (cm/360)The same eDPI means different things in different games — 800 eDPI is 51.95 cm/360 in CS2 and 16.33 in Valorant. Only cm/360 compares across titles.
- Sensitivity for a Target cm/360You know the cm/360 you want. This gives the in-game sensitivity that produces it - or the DPI to change instead if you would rather keep your sens.
"What sensitivity do you use?" is the most-asked and least-useful question in aim discussion, because the answer means nothing without two other numbers attached.
There is a ladder of three figures here, each fixing a problem the one before it has. Getting them in the right order is most of the battle.
Rung one: eDPI, for comparing within a game
In-game sensitivity is a multiplier applied to your mouse's DPI, so a sens of 1 at 400 DPI and a sens of 1 at 1600 DPI are four times apart. Quoting the sens alone tells nobody anything.
eDPI — DPI multiplied by in-game sensitivity — collapses those into one comparable number. The eDPI Calculator does it in both directions, and the second direction is the one people actually need.
Changing your DPI without changing your aim is the common case. At 800 DPI and a sens of 1 your eDPI is 800; move to 1600 DPI and the tool tells you to set your sens to 0.5 to land in exactly the same place. Doing that by feel costs weeks.
It will also compare you against someone else's figure: against a quoted eDPI of 1000, yours is 0.8 times theirs, or 20% lower.
Rung two: cm/360, because eDPI breaks between games
Here is where most people get stuck, and it is worth being precise about.
eDPI does not transfer between games. Every title applies its own yaw constant — how much rotation one mouse count produces — so identical eDPI feels wildly different in two games.
The Mouse Sensitivity Converter works in the unit that does survive the trip: cm/360, the physical distance you drag the mouse to turn all the way around. That is a measurement of your hand, and your hand does not change between games.
The scale of the problem is larger than people expect. That same 800 eDPI:
| Game yaw | cm per 360° |
|---|---|
| 0.022 (CS2) | 51.95 cm |
| 0.07 (Valorant) | 16.33 cm |
The same settings, and a turn that takes half a metre in one game takes 16 centimetres in the other. Anyone who has moved between titles and found their aim inexplicably broken has met this.
The converter's Same feel in the other game output solves it directly: to keep 51.95 cm/360 in the 0.07-yaw game, set your sensitivity to 0.314.
Rung three: pick the number first, then work backwards
Once you accept that cm/360 is the real setting, the natural move is to choose one deliberately rather than inherit it from whatever you happened to have.
The Sensitivity for a Target cm/360 calculator runs that direction. Ask for a 40 cm sweep at 800 DPI in a 0.022-yaw game and it returns a sensitivity of 1.299.
Two things it gives you that matter more than the headline:
- How big a change that is. Coming from a sens of 0.8 — a 64.94 cm sweep — reaching 40 cm is a 62% increase. That is not an adjustment, it is a relearn, and knowing the size in advance is what stops you abandoning it after two bad games.
- Or change DPI to this and keep your sens. Rather than moving your sens, set your mouse to 1,299 DPI and leave the in-game figure alone. Useful when your sens is tied to muscle memory across several games at once.
The constraint nobody checks: your mousepad
All three tools report what your pad can physically accommodate, and it is the thing that most often makes a "correct" setting unusable.
A 180° flick is half your cm/360. At the 40 cm target that is a 20 cm drag, leaving 25 cm of a 45 cm pad. At the slower 51.95 cm/360 setting the same flick needs 25.98 cm and leaves 19 cm.
Run out of pad mid-turn and you have to lift and reposition in the middle of a fight. A low sensitivity that does not fit your desk is worse than a slightly higher one that does — buy the pad or raise the sens, but do not pretend the problem is not there.
The short version
- Never quote or compare a bare in-game sensitivity. It means nothing alone.
- Use eDPI to compare within one game, and to change DPI without changing your aim.
- Use cm/360 across games — eDPI does not transfer, and the gap can be threefold.
- Choose a cm/360 deliberately and work backwards to the setting.
- Check the 180° flick against your pad width before committing to anything.
- Change one thing, then give it a week. Every one of these changes costs adjustment time.
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