How to Fix Input Lag & Boost FPS in osu!

osu! is a game of milliseconds, and input lag steals them. If the game feels sluggish or your aim seems to arrive late, the cause is usually frame rate and latency settings, not your hardware. This guide covers the settings that make osu! feel sharp.

Raise and cap your frame rate

• Set your frame limiter to Unlimited or a high cap - higher FPS means less delay between your input and what you see.
• Some players cap at a stable multiple of their monitor refresh rate to avoid stutter.
• Turn off any in-game or driver-level frame smoothing - it adds latency.
• Close background apps that eat CPU or GPU while you play.

Cut input latency

• Enable raw input so your tablet or mouse bypasses Windows pointer processing.
• Turn off Windows mouse acceleration (Enhance pointer precision).
• Use a wired mouse or a low-latency tablet; basic wireless adds delay.
• Run in exclusive fullscreen rather than borderless where possible, and disable fullscreen optimisations for the osu! executable.

If it still stutters

Stutter is different from lag. If your FPS is high but the game hitches, the cause is usually a background process, a full disk, or storyboard-heavy maps. Disable storyboards and video in the options, keep some free disk space, and make sure osu! is not running off a slow external drive.

Once the game feels responsive, your unstable rate often drops on its own - a lot of what feels like inconsistent tapping is really just input delay.