Mouse without borders seems very laggy

[mholtmanns]

Microsoft PowerToys version

0.70.0

Installation method

PowerToys auto-update

Running as admin

No

Area(s) with issue?

Mouse Without Borders

Steps to reproduce

Updated Power Toys on two PCs to the newest version.
Enabled Mouse without borders on both and connected them.
Enabled relative mouse because I have very different multi-monitor setups for each.

And I am seeing very laggy mouse movement on the connected PC when moving the host PC mouse a bit faster.

Both PCs are connected to the same switch.

✔️ Expected Behavior

Very low latency in mouse movements.

❌ Actual Behavior

High latency seen with fast mouse movements, experienced as laggy mouse movements on the connected PC.

Other Software

No response

[crutkas]

Did the original MWB experience the same issue? /needinfo

[mholtmanns]

What do you mean by "Original" MWB? I tried this feature for the first time with the current release.

[erik434]

@mholtmanns MWB has been around as a standalone program outside of Powertoys for years now. You might give that version a try and see if it has the same problem or not.

[Ev3rdown]

Having a similar problem of "laggy" mouse, I found that in my case it's related to the "Draw mouse cursor" option. It seems that the software isn't capable of "drawing" the mouse fast enough, which leads to this "laggy" render. I say "render", because the mouse actually is always where you want it (if you click), you just can't see it in real-time.
To reproduce, you need to connect MWB to a computer that doesn't have a mouse connected to it (e.g. remove the mouse from a desktop) and then use a high refresh rate mouse (like Logitech g502) from your remote. I specify "high refresh rate" because when using my trackpad I don't have this problem.
I suspect that something like a position buffer fills faster (1000 Hz with a g502) than what the renderer can update on screen (200 Hz maybe ?) and that would also explain why my "slow" trackpad doesn't lag, it's just not filling the buffer fast enough to cause a problem.

@mholtmanns Do you think this may be your case ? You can test by enabling/disabling "Draw mouse cursor" and leaving a mouse connected to your remote pc if you don't already have one.

Hope it helps

[bastian2001]

I have the same problem:

PC with 3 monitors (60Hz - 144Hz - 60Hz) and a 1kHz mouse (Corsair Harpoon RGB Pro). My laptop has a 60Hz screen.

Controlling my PC from my laptop's trackpad is lightning fast, much faster than 60Hz. A mouse polling rate checker reveals around 150Hz polling rate of my trackpad.

Controlling my laptop from my PC is super sluggish. Afformentioned polling rate checker reveals an update rate of 500Hz. That is 2x from the actual mouse. That roughly corresponds with my experience of the mouse moving roughly for 2x the amount ot time that I actually move the mouse.

[LordManhattan]

Same issue. Super smooth from laptop to desktop, but latency is super high from desktop to laptop. It's not just mouse movement, but also typing (on the desktop keyboard). Both are on 5 GHz WiFi.

[JorrinKievit]

Same issue, not laggy with the original MWB.

[GTGalaxi]

I've had this same issue, also super smooth from laptop to desktop but very laggy from desktop to laptop.

I found that changing the polling rate on my mouse for my desktop from 1000Hz to 250hz fixed the lag. Definitely seems to be unable to transfer the buffer of mouse inputs fast enough on a higher polling rate. I also tried on 500Hz which was better than 1000Hz but still a bit laggy.

[maicol07]

I confirm the same issue with my 1000hz polling rate mouse

[JuliusGoelz]

Can also confirm. Setting the polling rate to 250Hz resolves the issue.

[mortalsky]

Same issue. Very laggy from desktop to laptop but smooth from laptop to desktop. Win7 desktop, win10 laptop.

[riokitumbra]

Same issue, with high polling rate (1000 Hz) mouse. As Ev3rdown mentioned, the issue only occurs if the computer doesn't have a mouse attached and MWB is drawing the cursor. If I enable Mouse Keys (or attach a mouse) so Windows draws the cursor natively, then there are no issues. Enabling Mouse Keys seems to be a much better experience overall anyway since the cursor that MWB draws doesn't change to other cursor types when hovering over items (such as the hand cursor when hovering over a link, double-arrow cursor when trying to resize a window, etc.).

[yuyoyuppe]

@riokitumbra What do you mean by Mouse Keys?

[riokitumbra]

Microsoft's accessibility feature, which lets you move the mouse cursor via numpad: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/use-mouse-keys-to-move-the-mouse-pointer-9e0c72c8-b882-7918-8e7b-391fd62adf33. Turning this on more or less results in Windows believing that a real mouse is connected to the system, so Windows natively shows a mouse cursor.

[ichijikuibo]

I have the same issue (wired connection 1000hz mouse, 3440x1440 & 1920x1080 screens on destination PC, used original for years without issue) disabling draw mouse cursor improved it greatly but still performs worse than the original. On mine the CPU usage of the power toys version(about 10% when moving mouse a lot) is around double the CPU usage of the original(5%), on high CPU usage the original would lag too but the power toys version starts lagging sooner. Reducing poll rate of mouse cuts CPU usage massively as you would expect and removing the higher resolution monitor also seems to reduce CPU usage too.

[Volodesi]

Same here. The original MWB felt fine.. almost 1:1 when moving between monitors. Only issue I had was the mouse randomly being placed at the top of the screen or in the center.. pausing videos or clicking tabs when I switched screens.

I decided to switch to the PowerToy's version to see if it was better. But it's almost unusable for me. Mouse feels like I have 500 ping or something.

[bastian2001]

Seems to be fixed since 0.71.0 🎉

[yuyoyuppe]

@bastian2001 That's nice to hear, but it's weird 🤔
We're planning to fix it in #27229 which is going to be in 0.72.

[leic4u]

I am facing the laggy problem in v0.71, and wish it gets fixed soon.

[crutkas]

We have an active PR open with a fix

[veekayinhk]

This is also happening to me on version 0.71.

I disabled the top few items in "Behavior" and seemed to have reduce the lag (but still highly noticeable.

I also have a high polling rate mouse (Logitech G304) but changing the polling doesn't seem to help.

[maghdzany]

I also have the same problem. its very smooth controlling my pc with my laptop's trackpad, but very laggy when controlling my laptop with my mouse. But it can be fixed by changing my mouse polling rate to 250 in Logitech G Hub

[jaimecbernardo]

This issue has been worked on during the 0.72 development cycle. Please update your PowerToys installation to the latest.
https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases
Thank you!

[veekayinhk]

Unfortunately this issue still seems to affect me. I am running Logitech G304. Not sure if it's my settings, but I have tried turning on / off various settings on both machines to try (eg Draw mouse cursor; move mouse relatively).

I'm not running it as a service however.

Edit: 12 Sept 2023 - I've resolved this. Appears I had a networking configuration issue that affected a few other things.

[riokitumbra]

Performance definitely seems resolved for me with version 0.72, both with the drawn mouse cursor and after I enable Mouse Keys. Mouse responsive now seems to be exactly as responsive as when the mouse is directly attached to the machine.

[0uts1de-v]

I had the same problem, but solved it by setting "Settings -> System -> Projecting to this PC" to "Always Off".

[lsitest]

I have the same problem. Up until recently i've been using the standalone version the one from Microsoft Garage. But since i switched to the powertoys version this one works verry poorly by comparison. My connections are wired so no iffy wifi signal problems, but the cursor seems very off. Som etimes its just slow other times it's freezes in place for 1 second, which happens every few seconds) I'm using PowerToys v0.73.0

[androdies7]

I had the same problem, but solved it by setting "Settings -> System -> Projecting to this PC" to "Always Off".

Thank you bro @0uts1de-v!
The problem was precisely this parameter!

[JustinRamroop]

Same problem on 0.78.0. Previous versions worked fine. Changing my mouse polling rate did not fix it, neither did disabling Draw Mouse or anything like that. Desktop on Ethernet, Laptop on 5GHz WiFi.

[ruhai-lin]

Same problem on 0.77. Neither Disabling draw mouse nor turning "Projecting to this PC" off works. Two laptops under the same WiFi.

[ruhai-lin]

Same problem on 0.77. Neither Disabling draw mouse nor turning "Projecting to this PC" off works. Two laptops under the same WiFi.

A possible reason could be one is Win11 the other is Win10

[Fanmade]

I have the same issue with 0.78.0.
Both devices (Surface Pro 8 and a PC) run Windows 11.
I've used the Microsoft Garage version until last week without issues.

I immediately switched after discovering that this is now integrated into the PowerToys.
That worked fine for a while, but it started to lag today.
The projection has never been activated on my Surface.
I also don't understand why I should reduce my mouse polling rate if that wasn't a problem with the previous software.
I guess I'll reinstall the standalone version and maybe try this here again in a year or so.

[leic4u]

I have the same problem with v0.78.0.
I tried to reduce my mouse polling rate and get it back as before immediately, then it works correctly.

[bawat]

I had the same problem, but solved it by setting "Settings -> System -> Projecting to this PC" to "Always Off".

This turned out to be the solution in my case. The receiving PC has Projecting to this PC enabled.

[Stefanocannata]

I have the same problem with v0.84.1.
Dicreasing mouse polling rate improves but doesn't solve the problem