How to Change the Stylus Sensitivity on the Tablet PC

If you have a touch-screen tablet PC and are using it with a stylus, learning how to customize the pen’s behavior – and your computer’s response to it – is an important part of setting up everything the way you want. While there are many options you can adjust, Windows offers only limited options for the sensitivity of the pen outside of its Surface app. However, you can perform a calibration through Control Panel that may rectify issues. On a Mac using Motion, you can also make several adjustments that affect the sensitivity of your stylus.

If you’re using Windows 10, go to “Settings” (the cog icon in the Start menu) to access the Pen Settings, using the approach described by Microsoft. Go to “Devices” and then choose “Pen & Windows Ink” from the options on the left of the window. This gives you a range of options to adjust the behavior of your pen, particularly if your pen has a shortcut button. These options allow you to choose what happens when you perform a single-click, double-click, or press and hold the button.

However, the settings you’re most likely to need are the ones detailed by How-to Geek. These include:

• “Choose which hand you write with,” which affects the positioning of contextual menus
• “Show Visual Effects” (things like ripples that occur when you touch your pen to the screen)
• “Show cursor”
• “Ignore touch input when I’m using my pen,” which stops Windows from recognizing accidental touches such as your palm grazing the screen when you use the pen.

Adjust the options to your liking and then close the window to complete the process.

Windows Central explains how to calibrate the accuracy of your stylus pen using the options in Control Panel. Go to your Control Panel in the field in the bottom left and then to “Hardware and Sound.” In the “Tablet PC Settings” section, choose the option to “Calibrate the screen for pen or touch input.” This brings up a dialog with tabs for Display and Other, which contains the options listed in the previous section. In the “Display” tab, choose “Calibrate” to go to the calibration page.

Choose “Pen input” and go through the process to calibrate your pen. Essentially this involves pressing the pen on specific places on the display so Windows can recognize what you’re trying to do more accurately. Although it isn’t sensitivity, this may rectify issues you’re having with your stylus.

Microsoft’s Surface laptops have a specific app that allows you to make more detailed adjustments to the Surface Pen. As How-to Geek explains, the machine should already have the Surface app installed, but if not, you can easily install it through the Windows app store. Open Surface and select the pen icon on the left of the screen. This allows you to adjust the “Pressure Sensitivity” of the Surface Pen’s touches, which changes how Windows responds to a harder or softer press. Adjust the slider to your preferences, testing it in the space to the right until you get it working the way you want.

Mac users who have the Motion app can adjust some important parameters when using a Wacom stylus along with the Paint Stroke tool, according to Apple. Going to the behavior controls of Apply Pen Pressure gives you several options, including adjusting the “Min Pressure” and “Max Pressure,” which are cutoffs for how hard you need to push and the maximum strength, respectively. The “Scale” slider lets you increase or decrease how much the system responds to differences in pressure.

The “Apply to” pop-up gives you options for how harder strokes affect the strokes that you make. These include increasing the width and opacity of the stroke, the spacing between subsequent presses, the angle of the stroke and the jitter in the stroke.