See whether pressure, tilt and hover reach the browser from your pen
The pen pressure test shows exactly what the browser receives while you draw on the paper with a drawing tablet or tablet stylus. How hard you press (pen pressure) appears as a 0–100% value and a bar, how that force changed during one stroke appears as a pressure curve graph, and the angle and direction of a tilted pen appear on a dial seen from above. It also checks whether the pen's position arrives while you hold it above the surface (hover), and whether the side button and the eraser end are recognized.
Line width follows pressure, so light pressure draws a thin line and hard pressure a thick one. When pressure does not work in a drawing app, drawing here first tells you whether the pen and driver pass pressure on to the operating system at all. Pen values are calculated inside this page only and are never stored or sent.
When a pen pressure test helps
- After connecting a new tablet Right after installing the driver, confirm in one pass that pressure, tilt and the side button all arrive.
- When pressure suddenly stops working in a drawing app If pressure is fixed here too, look at the pen, the driver and Windows Ink. If it works here, check the app's tablet input mode first.
- After updating a driver or the operating system Re-check with the five-item checklist that your settings are intact.
- When buying or selling a used tablet or pen Copy the result to share the pressure range, tilt and button results in a message.
- When choosing a pressure setting Draw with the same force and compare the maximum pressure and curve shape under each setting.
- When you are unsure which Apple Pencil you have Apple Pencil (USB-C) does not support pressure sensitivity. If line width does not change as you vary force, check the pen model first.
How to run the test
- Put the pen tip on the paper and draw one long stroke: start light, press harder, then ease off. If the pressure curve rises and falls like a hill, pressure is coming in.
- Press all the way down and see whether the maximum gets close to 100%, then draw with a barely-there touch to see the lightest value.
- Tilt the pen and draw at an angle. If the line on the tilt dial lengthens and the angle changes, tilt is coming in.
- Hold the pen just above the paper without touching it and move it. If the accent-colored circle follows the pen, hover is coming in.
- Draw while holding the side button and look for an accent-colored line. If your pen has an eraser end, flip it and rub to see whether the line is erased.
- When all five items are checked, press Copy result. In full screen (F key) the paper grows to the height of the screen.
How to read the result
Items ② to ⑤ count only input drawn with a pen. Item ① shows what kind of input arrived, so it flags a mouse or finger; those lines stay on the paper but are not used to judge pressure or tilt.
| What you see | Meaning | What to do next |
|---|---|---|
| ① Pen detected: Received · pen · ~n Hz | The browser received the input as a pen. Hz is how many times per second the pen reported its position. | Look at ② Pressure. |
| ① Arrived as mouse | You drew with a pen but it arrived as mouse input. Pressure is fixed at 0.5 in that case, even for a pressure-capable pen. | On Windows, turn on the Windows Ink setting in the tablet driver and draw again. |
| ② Received · 2%–100% | Pressure changes with force. The first number is the lightest touch and the second is the maximum. | Move on to tilt and hover. |
| ② Check · Fixed at 0.500 | The pen is recognized but no pressure information arrives. By the specification, input with unknown pressure reports 0.5 while pressed. | Check that the pen supports pressure and that the driver's pen settings are correct. |
| ② Partial | You drew three or more strokes but the maximum pressure stays under 85%. | Press all the way down. If it stays the same, move the driver's pressure sensitivity toward the softer side and compare again. |
| ③ None · Stays at 0° | No tilt value arrives even when you tilt the pen. | Check the pen's specifications for tilt support. |
| ④ Not yet | The position of the hovering pen has not arrived yet. | Move slowly at a height just short of touching the paper. On an iPad, check the table below for hover-capable models. |
| ⑤ Only the side button is Not yet | No button signal has reached the browser. | Check that the driver has not assigned that button to another function such as a shortcut. |
What the pressure curve shape says about your pen
The horizontal axis of the pressure curve is the time since the stroke began (the latest 4 seconds) and the vertical axis is pressure from 0 to 100%. The dotted line is the highest pressure so far and the faint line is the stroke just before. When you apply force the same way each time, the curve's shape hints at the state of the pen.
A smooth rise and fall that follows your force is normal. If values climb in a few steps, pressure arrives in coarse levels. A flat horizontal line in the middle regardless of force means only 0.5 arrives, with no pressure. If the top of the curve is cut off at the same height even when you press hard, pressure is not reaching its maximum; change the pressure setting and draw the same stroke again to compare.
Why an 8,192-level pen shows steps of 1/1024
The “finest step” under the pressure readout is the smallest difference between the distinct pressure values received so far, written as 1/N. The longer you draw while changing force slowly, the closer it gets to the true step, and it is shown once there are more than 30 distinct values.
In Chrome and Edge on Windows, 1/1024 is the normal result. Windows passes pen pressure as an integer from 0 to 1024, and Chromium divides it by 1024 before handing it to the page. The 8,192 levels in a pen's specifications are what the pen and driver read, so the step after passing through the operating system can differ, and the browser result alone cannot tell you whether the pen produces 8,192 levels.
| Stage | Pressure value | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Pen and driver | Levels in the specification (e.g. 8,192) | Wacom Intuos Pro product information |
| Windows pen input | Integer 0–1024 | Microsoft Learn |
| Chrome and Edge (Windows) | Integer ÷ 1024 → 0–1 | Chromium source |
| Web page | 0–1; 0.5 while pressed if pressure is unknown | W3C specification |
How to read the tilt dial
The dial is a view from above of the pen on the paper. The center dot is the pen tip, and the line is a shadow cast toward the top of the pen. Held upright, the line is short and it lengthens as you lay the pen down. The inner ring marks 30° from vertical and the outer ring 60°. The large number is the angle from vertical, and the sentence below gives the clock direction the top of the pen points toward.
Browsers report tilt in two ways: tiltX and tiltY (angles around each axis, −90 to 90°) and altitudeAngle and azimuthAngle. The latter are supported from Chrome 86, Firefox 131 and Safari 18.2; in other browsers this page calculates them from tiltX and tiltY with the formulas in the W3C specification. If the pen reports rotation around its own axis (twist, 0–359°), the value appears next to the direction. The range of tilt a pen can sense varies; the Wacom Intuos Pro, for example, senses up to ±60° according to its specifications.
Line width curves and pressure settings
The line width curve in the row below the paper is a setting of this page that decides how thick a given pressure is drawn. Soft uses pressure to the power of 0.6, Medium uses pressure as it is, and Firm uses pressure to the power of 1.7. Changing the curve redraws existing lines with the new curve, so you can compare the same stroke under all three. The pressure on the gauge is the value the browser received, before the curve.
| Curve | Pressure 25% | Pressure 50% | Pressure 75% | Pressure 100% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Soft | 7.6 px | 11.0 px | 13.7 px | 16.0 px |
| Medium | 4.9 px | 8.6 px | 12.3 px | 16.0 px |
| Firm | 2.6 px | 5.8 px | 10.3 px | 16.0 px |
Pressure settings in a driver or drawing app do the same job: choose the softer side if you want a thick line from a light touch, and the firmer side if you want to have to press harder for thickness. Whether a change made in the driver also changes the value the browser receives depends on the driver, so after changing a setting, draw again with the same force here and compare the maximum pressure and curve shape.
Where to look first, by device
| Device | Where to check |
|---|---|
| Wacom tablet (Windows) | If pen pressure does not work, turn on Windows Ink in the driver. It is the ‘Use Windows Ink’ checkbox on the Mapping tab of the Wacom Tablet Properties. |
| Huion tablet (Windows) | Turn on Enable Windows Ink in the driver. Huion says to turn it off instead if your drawing app uses WinTab. |
| XP-PEN tablet (Windows) | In the driver's pen settings, check that Windows Ink is turned on. |
| Windows laptop or tablet with a pen | On Windows 11, change pen settings under Start > Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Pen & Windows Ink. |
| iPad + Apple Pencil | Apple Pencil (USB-C) does not sense pressure (it does sense tilt). Hover works on iPad Pro (M4, M5), iPad Pro 11-inch (4th generation), iPad Pro 12.9-inch (6th generation), iPad Air (M2, M3, M4) and iPad mini (A17 Pro, A20 Pro), and you turn it off or on under Settings > Apple Pencil. |
| Galaxy S Pen | The feature that shows a preview when you hold the pen above the screen is Air view, under Settings > Advanced features > S Pen > Air view. Menu names can differ by device and One UI version. |
Common mistakes
- Drawing with a mouse or touchpad and concluding that pressure is fixed A mouse reports 0.5 while pressed, which is normal. If ① says “Arrived as mouse,” the result is not from a pen.
- Assuming an app and the browser give the same result Windows drawing apps receive the pen through either WinTab or Windows Ink, while the browser uses Windows pen input. That is why pressure can work in the app but not here, or the other way around.
- Treating a maximum below 100% as a fault The force needed to reach the maximum depends on the pressure setting. Compare with the same force under different settings before judging.
- Comparing the specified number of levels directly with the finest step The step has passed through the operating system and browser, so it can be coarser than the specification.
- Reading the report rate as the screen refresh rate The report rate is how often the pen sends its position, while the screen refresh rate is how often the screen is redrawn. Measure the refresh rate separately with the Refresh Rate Test.
- A menu opens when you press the side button The side button reaches the browser with the same number as the right mouse button. The menu is blocked on this paper, but other pages may show a right-click menu.
Limitations of this test
- It only sees what the browser received. Because values have passed through the driver and operating system, it cannot directly measure the pen hardware's pressure levels or its sensing height.
- Hover height cannot be known. Standard web pen input has no pen-to-screen distance, so the distance an Android app receives (AXIS_DISTANCE) does not reach the page either.
- Even on a supported iPad model, hover may not reach the page depending on the iPadOS and Safari versions.
- The report rate is measured only in browsers that provide dense samples (getCoalescedEvents): Chrome 58, Firefox 59 or Safari 18.2 and later.
- Motions such as the barrel roll of Apple Pencil Pro are shown only when the browser passes on a twist value.
- Even if pressure is normal here, pressure can still fail in a drawing app whose input mode setting differs.
Checked on Setting menu names and source documents were checked on 2026-10-30. Menu names and locations can change when drivers, operating systems or apps are updated.
Sources
- 01W3C: Pointer Events Level 3Pressure 0–1 and 0.5 for unknown pressure, tiltX, tiltY, twist, altitude and azimuth with conversion formulas, eraser button 5, side button 2, hover buttons 0
- 02MDN: PointerEvent.altitudeAngleBrowsers supporting altitude and azimuth (Chrome 86, Firefox 131, Safari 18.2)
- 03MDN: PointerEvent.getCoalescedEvents()Dense samples of merged move events (Chrome 58, Firefox 59, Safari 18.2)
- 04Microsoft Learn: POINTER_PEN_INFO structureWindows pen pressure is normalized to 0–1024, tilt −90 to 90°, rotation 0–359°
- 05Chromium source: pen_event_processor.ccWindows pen pressure integer divided by 1024 to give 0–1
- 06Wacom support: Why pen pressure is not workingTurn on Windows Ink in the driver
- 07Wacom support: Virtual keyboard opens every time you use the penThe ‘Use Windows Ink’ checkbox on the Mapping tab
- 08Wacom: Wacom Intuos Pro8,192 pressure levels, tilt sensing up to ±60°
- 09Huion support: When pen pressure is not available in an applicationTurn Windows Ink on for apps that use it and off for apps that use WinTab32
- 10XP-PEN: Artist Pro 16 user manualCheck that Windows Ink is turned on in the driver's pen settings
- 11Microsoft Support: Use a pen with WindowsStart > Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Pen & Windows Ink (Windows 11)
- 12Apple: Compare Apple Pencil modelsNo pressure sensitivity on Apple Pencil (USB-C); iPad models that support hover
- 13iPad User Guide: Draw with Apple Pencil on iPadHover to preview where the pen will land, Settings > Apple Pencil
- 14WebKit: WebKit Features in Safari 16.1Apple Pencil hover on the new iPad Pro
- 15Samsung support: S Pen Air viewSettings > Advanced features > S Pen > Air view
- 16Android Developers: MotionEventDistance between stylus and screen, AXIS_DISTANCE (apps only)
Frequently asked questions
How do I run a pen pressure test?
Draw a long line on the paper with the pen tip: start light, press harder, then ease off. If the pressure curve rises and falls like a hill and the pressure item changes to Received, pressure is coming in. Then tilt the pen to check tilt, hold it just above the paper to check hover, and test the side button and the eraser end.
I drew with a pen but pressure is stuck at 0.5 (50%).
When the browser receives no pressure information, the specification says it reports 0.5 while pressed. If the pen item says the input arrived as a mouse, the pen is being treated as a mouse; on Windows, turn on the Windows Ink setting in the tablet driver and draw again. A pen without pressure sensing, such as Apple Pencil (USB-C), will not change its value however you press.
Pressure works in my drawing app but not here, or the other way around.
Browsers on Windows receive the pen through the operating system's pen input (Windows Ink), so if it works here, the pen and driver are sending pressure. Drawing apps use either WinTab or Windows Ink, so check that the app's tablet input mode and the driver's Windows Ink setting match.
My pen has 8,192 levels but the step shows 1/1024. Is it broken?
No. Windows passes pen pressure as an integer from 0 to 1024, and Chrome and Edge divide it by 1024 before giving it to the page. The levels in a pen's specification are what the pen and driver read, so they can differ from the step you see in the browser.
Tilt stays at 0° when I tilt the pen.
If it stays at 0° even when you lay the pen down, either the pen does not sense tilt or the driver or browser is not passing tilt values on. Check the pen's specifications for tilt support. When tilt arrives, the line on the dial gets longer the more you tilt the pen.
What is hover, and why does it stay at Not yet?
Hover reports the position of a pen floating above the screen before it touches. If the accent-colored circle follows the pen when you move it just above the paper, hover is Received. If no circle appears, that device and browser are not sending the hovering pen's position to the page, and only certain iPad models support hover.
Pressing the side button is not detected.
The side button reaches the browser with the same number as the right mouse button. If the driver has assigned that button to another function such as a shortcut, no button signal may reach the browser, so check the pen button settings in the driver.
What is the report rate (Hz)?
It is how many times per second the pen sent its position. It is measured from the interval between the dense samples inside events the browser merged together, and it is not shown in browsers that do not support this. It is different from the screen refresh rate, which is how often the screen is redrawn.