Controls & Input Settings Glossary

By Treesz · Updated Oct 12, 2026

How a game reads your hands matters as much as how it looks. The same game can feel sharp or sluggish depending on a handful of input options: whether crouch is held or toggled, whether the mouse is smoothed, whether the cursor can escape the window, whether the sticks are mapped the way you expect. This glossary explains eight terms you find in control menus and settings guides, and links to a ninth, keybinds.

Where the terms apply: mouse and keyboard on PC (mouse smoothing, cursor lock, keybinds), controllers (twin-stick, run button, toggles), phones (swipe gestures) and the living room (split screen). Defaults and toggles apply everywhere.

Term	What it is	Platform	Typical decision
Toggle	Press once to switch on, press again to switch off	All	Toggle for long actions, hold for short ones
Default settings	What the game uses before you change anything	All	Treat as a starting point
Mouse smoothing	Averaging mouse input over several frames	PC	Off for shooters and anything that needs precision
Cursor lock	Keeping the mouse pointer inside the game window	PC	On for fullscreen; off if you switch windows often
Split screen	Several players share one display	Console and PC	Pick horizontal or vertical if the game offers it
Swipe gesture	Dragging a finger across the screen as an input	Mobile	Adjust sensitivity; mind the screen edges
Twin-stick	One stick moves, the other aims	Controllers and mobile	Tune dead zones and sensitivity
Run button	Faster movement while pressed or toggled	All	Hold, toggle or automatic sprint

Toggle

A toggle is a control that switches something on with one press and off with the next. The opposite is a hold, where the thing is active only while you keep the button down. Almost any repeated action can be either:

Action	Hold means	Toggle means
Crouch	Down only while the key is pressed	Press once to crouch, again to stand
Sprint	Fast while you hold it	Keep running until you stop or are hit
Aim down sights	Aim only while the button is held	Aim stays until you press again
Ability (in some MMOs and RPGs)	Not used	The ability stays on and keeps drawing a resource

Which is better depends on the game and on your hands. Toggles remove strain in long sessions, because you do not have to keep a finger pressed, and they are an important accessibility option: players with limited hand mobility or pain from repetitive strain often cannot hold a button. Holds are faster to cancel and harder to get stuck in, which matters in a firefight.

Good games let you choose per action. Minecraft: Java Edition, for example, has separate hold-or-toggle settings for sprint and sneak. In shooters, many players set crouch to toggle and aim to hold, so that the long action is easy and the one they need to cancel instantly is not.

Toggle also describes abilities that stay on and use a resource each second. In older MMOs and some RPGs, such abilities are switched on with a click and drain energy until you switch them off, so forgetting one can run you out of resource at the wrong time. In World of Warcraft the related idea of pet abilities that fire on their own is described in our article on the auto-cast toggle.

A practical tip: if your character keeps moving after you let go, or keeps aiming when you did not mean to, you probably have a toggle set where you expected a hold. Check the control options before blaming the keyboard.

Default settings

Default settings are the options a game, console, driver or operating system uses before you change anything: graphics quality, controls, sensitivity, audio and interface. They are chosen to work acceptably for most players and hardware, which means they are rarely the best choice for your specific setup or playstyle.

Developers pick defaults as a safe middle ground. On PC, many games check your hardware on first launch and pick a graphics preset; consoles ship with fixed defaults for each mode. Controls start on a standard layout, audio is balanced so no channel drowns out the others, and interface elements are turned on so new players can see everything.

Defaults also exist outside the game. Windows, your graphics driver, your mouse software and your controller all have their own default behaviour, and these layers stack. A game can be configured perfectly and still feel wrong because something underneath it is set to a default that does not suit gaming.

Examples:

Mouse acceleration in Windows. The "Enhance pointer precision" option is on by default. It changes how far the pointer moves depending on how fast you move the mouse, which helps on a small desk but makes aim inconsistent in shooters. Many players switch it off and use raw input in the game instead.
Automatic resolution scaling. Several Overwatch 2 settings guides note that Dynamic Render Scale is enabled by default. It lowers the resolution on the fly to protect frame rate, which some players see as a blurry image during fights. See render scale.
Accessibility options switched off. Fortnite's Visualize Sound Effects, which shows footsteps and gunfire on screen, is off by default and has to be turned on in the Audio settings.
Driver-suggested settings. Tools such as the NVIDIA app can replace a game's defaults with settings based on your graphics card, processor and display, with a slider between performance and quality. Treat the result as a starting point.

Tips:

Write down or screenshot your settings before experimenting.
Use "Reset to default" as a troubleshooting step. If a game starts crashing or stuttering after you changed many options, resetting one category at a time helps you find the cause.
Check settings after big patches. Updates sometimes add new options with their own defaults, or reset existing ones.
Change one thing at a time and test it in a real match or training mode, not only in the menu.
Look below the game. If aim or input feels off, check Windows mouse settings, mouse or controller software and system-level button remapping.
Do not copy professional players' settings blindly. They tune for their own monitor, hardware and habits.

Whether "Reset to default" deletes your keybinds depends on the game: some reset each tab on its own, others reset everything. Read the confirmation prompt and note your custom binds before you press it. If settings change back on their own, the usual causes are a game update, a corrupted or deleted config file, cloud sync from another device, or a driver or optimisation tool applying its own profile.

Mouse smoothing

Mouse smoothing is a filter in the game that averages your mouse movement over several moments so that the view moves in a smoother line. The idea comes from the early days of 3D shooters. Quake had a m_filter setting that averaged the current and previous mouse readings, and later engines offered similar options under names such as smoothing, filtering or interpolation.

The trade-off is always the same:

You gain a calmer picture if your mouse tracks badly or your frame rate is low and uneven.
You lose responsiveness and accuracy. Averaging means the view reacts to where your hand was a moment ago, so the game feels slightly late. Fine corrections get blurred, and the cursor can overshoot or lag when you stop.

Mouse smoothing is a different thing from mouse acceleration, which makes the cursor travel farther when you move the mouse quickly. Acceleration is mostly set by Windows ("Enhance pointer precision", see default settings) or the game; smoothing is added by the game's code. Competitive players generally turn off both, so that the same hand movement always gives the same movement on screen.

What to do:

Look in the mouse or controls section for smoothing, filter, mouse interpolation or raw input.
Switch smoothing off and use raw input if the game offers it. Raw input reads the mouse directly rather than through Windows' pointer settings.
If aim feels jittery, first check your mouse sensor and surface, your frame rate and your polling rate before adding smoothing. A low frame rate makes any mouse feel rough; see FPS cap for the frame rate side.

Smoothing can help in slow, cinematic games, in video capture, and in games that run at low frame rates. In fast shooters it almost always hurts.

Cursor lock

Cursor lock (also "confine cursor" or "mouse capture") keeps the mouse pointer inside the game's window. Without it, on a PC with two monitors, a quick flick can send the pointer to the other screen, a click then hits another window, and the game minimises or loses focus in the middle of a fight.

It works in two different ways, depending on the game:

Confined cursor. The pointer stays visible but cannot leave the window. This is used in strategy games, which need the pointer on screen and use the screen edges to scroll the map.
Locked, hidden cursor (relative mouse mode). In first- and third-person games the pointer is hidden and held in the centre; the game only reads how far the mouse moved. This is what makes endless turning possible.

Common problems and fixes:

Cursor escapes in windowed mode. Use borderless or fullscreen mode, or switch on the game's "confine mouse" or "lock cursor" option.
Cursor stuck after Alt+Tab. Click inside the game window once to give it focus again; if it is still locked to the old window, close the game and restart it.
Browser and cloud games. A web page needs your click to capture the mouse, and Esc releases it.

If you stream or switch windows a lot, turn the lock off in the settings or learn the hotkey that releases the cursor. If you play on one screen in fullscreen, leave it on.

Split screen

Split screen divides one display into separate views, one for each local player, so friends can play together on one console or PC. It is the classic form of couch multiplayer: GoldenEye 007 and early Halo games made it a staple in the late 1990s and 2000s, and it survives in games such as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, the Minecraft console versions and the co-op adventures A Way Out and It Takes Two, which are built around a shared screen.

How it works and what it costs:

Layout. Two players usually get a horizontal split (top and bottom) or a vertical one (side by side). Three or four players get quarters. Many games let you choose.
Performance. The console renders each player's view separately, so the cost goes up with every player. Games often reduce resolution, draw distance or effects in split screen to keep the frame rate.
Hardware. Every player needs a controller, and online features may need each player to sign in.
Availability is not guaranteed. The feature is expensive to build, and some modern games drop it. Halo Infinite is a well-known example: its campaign local split-screen was cancelled by the studio, which said it had reallocated its resources.

Tips for a good session:

Sit at a comfortable distance. A screen that is small for four people becomes hard to read.
If the HUD can be resized, make it larger. Interface elements shrink with the view.
Agree not to look at the other player's section. Glancing across is known as screen cheating, or "screen peeking", and in competitive couch games it is considered bad manners.
In shooters, use split screen with a friend on the same team, so that the shared information helps both of you.

Swipe gesture

A swipe is a quick drag of a finger across a touchscreen. In mobile games it is the basic way to act when there are no physical buttons. Common uses:

Slicing and cutting. Fruit Ninja turns your swipes into blade strokes.
Moving between lanes. In endless runners such as Temple Run and Subway Surfers, you swipe left or right to change direction, up to jump and down to slide.
Swapping pieces. In match-three games, you drag a tile to the neighbouring square.
Scrolling and navigating menus and maps, and in some action games, swiping to dodge or attack.

Swipes are simple but not precise. A short, diagonal or slow swipe is often misread, which is the most common reason for a lost run. Things that help:

Sensitivity. Many games let you change how far you must drag before the game counts a swipe. A lower threshold gives faster reactions but more accidental moves.
Swipe in the middle of the screen. Gestures that start at the very edge can collide with the phone's own navigation gestures (Android's back swipe or the home swipe on iPhone), and they can pull you out of the game. Many phones offer a game mode or let you turn the edge gesture off.
Keep the screen clean. A greasy or cracked screen drops touches.

Games with more complex actions use virtual sticks and buttons instead, as described under twin-stick controls.

Twin-stick controls

In twin-stick (dual-stick) controls, one analogue stick moves your character and the other aims or turns the camera. It is now the default for console shooters and action games, but it began in the arcade: Robotron: 2084 (Williams, 1982) put two joysticks on the cabinet, one to run and one to fire in any direction, and made the scheme popular. Smash TV followed in 1990. The style came back on consoles with arcade downloads such as Geometry Wars.

There are two flavours:

Top-down twin-stick shooters. You move in one direction and shoot in another, which is what makes dodging bullets while firing possible.
Camera-based twin-stick in 3D games. The right stick turns the camera, and in shooters it also aims. This is how Halo, Call of Duty on consoles and most third-person action games are controlled.

On phones, twin-stick is simulated with two virtual sticks: Brawl Stars, for example, uses a movement stick on the left and an aim stick on the right.

Settings that decide how twin-stick feels:

Setting	What it does	Typical advice
Dead zone	The part of the stick's travel that is ignored	Raise it a little if the view drifts on its own; keep it as small as possible otherwise
Sensitivity	Speed of the turn at full stick	Lower for precise aim, higher for fast turns
Response curve	How stick travel maps to turn speed (linear, dynamic, exponential)	Linear is easiest to learn
Aim assist	The game nudges your aim toward targets	Often stronger on controller than on mouse
Stick layout	Which stick moves and which aims	"Southpaw" swaps them

Drift (a stick that moves by itself) is a hardware fault: if raising the dead zone does not fix it, the stick needs cleaning or replacing.

Run button

The run button makes a character move faster than the default walk. How it works is a design decision that changes the whole feel of a game:

Hold to run. The character walks, and runs only while the button is held. The Super Mario Bros. games used a run button that doubled as the fire button, which is why Mario's longest jumps need a running start.
Hold to walk. In many shooters the default is to run, and a button makes you walk slowly and quietly. In Counter-Strike and Valorant, holding Shift makes you walk, which makes your footsteps quieter. See sound cues.
Toggle or automatic sprint. Newer games often let you set sprint as a toggle or have it start automatically when you push the stick or key forward. Apex Legends has an auto-sprint option.
Stamina. In some games running uses a stamina bar. Dark Souls is a known example: you run by holding the dodge button, and a tap rolls. See stamina bar.

Why it matters: speed changes risk. Running is faster but louder, and in stealth and tactical games it can give your position away. In platformers, it changes the jumps you can make. In RPGs it can drain a stamina bar you need for combat.

For comfort, consider automatic sprint or toggle if you play long sessions, and for competitive shooters keep the walk key within easy reach of your left hand. If a game offers "always run", check what it does to stealth and sound.

Keybinds

A keybind assigns an action to a key or button. The article Keybind explains how to build a layout: keep related actions next to each other, use modifier keys such as Shift or Ctrl to add more functions without moving your hand, and test changes in a safe place before a real match. Tools such as AutoHotkey or a controller mapping program can go further; note that in online games a script that sends several actions from one press is often treated as a macro and can be against the rules.