Adobe Illustrator: How to Turn Off Snap to Pixel Grid or Points 

Do you want to exercise your creativity and impress others with your new and innovative illustrations?

Adobe Illustrator is just the software to do it. But, to become a professional, one must know how to properly align objects, text, and images to create refined designs. So, if you're stressing over the small details ruining your otherwise perfect project, worry no more because you're at the right place.

Here's a quick and easy guideline to fix all of your issues with Illustrator's snap to pixel, point, or grid. 

Pixel Preview in Adobe Illustrator

Objects and illustrations produce crisp and clear vector images. This results in a project that's clear for mobile phone usage and desktops alike.  

But, while making your artwork in Illustrator, you won't see the actual pixel grid underneath. To view this, you need to turn on the Pixel Preview Mode. For this, open the View menu and enable the Pixel Preview mode. Moreover, you can also use the keyboard shortcut Alt + Ctrl + Y (PC) or Option + Cmd + Y (Mac). Then simply zoom in to see how your design will look when exported as PNG or JPEG files.  

Use of Snap to Pixel and Point in Illustrator

After you turn on pixel preview mode, the image will look somewhat blurry. Now, you may wonder why we should turn this mode on at all? That's because the clear image you see without turning it on is an illusion. The unaligned pixels result in unclear images.

To align this, turning on the snap-to-pixel option is the most commonly available option. To do this, select View, and enable Snap-to-Pixel Mode. You can toggle this according to your preferences with the drop-down menu. Similarly, when moving objects, Adobe Illustrator's Snap to Points tool assists in matching them to anchor points such as corners (it works sort of like a magnet). This can also be enabled in the same way.  

Once you enable the snap-to-pixel option, the straight lines in the image will become sharp. One thing to remember is that this does not work well with diagonal and curved lines. As good as this sounds, the snap-to-pixel and point option has its disadvantages. 

Disadvantages of Snap to Pixel or Points 

While enabling the snap-to-pixel option, you forego the chance to align or specify fractional stroke widths manually. For example, if you want to assign a stroke width of 1.5 to a square, Illustrator will instantly change that to 2.  

Similarly, as can be seen in the image below, it's not possible to move the shadow by less than a 1-pixel increment. This makes it harder for you to create your desired result. Thus, all you have to do is turn off the snap-to-pixel or point option to stop snapping. Then you can move and align the details in any way you prefer with no snapping or jumping pixels. 

How to Disable Snap to Pixel, Point, and Grid

Want to understand how to turn off snap to grid, pixel, or point in Illustrator? Well, it's simple. All you have to do is select View and turn off (uncheck) Snap to Pixel and Snap to Point or Snap to Grid. You toggle it on and off in the snap settings as needed.

Now, all you have to do is align the image to your liking! You can move objects freely and smoothly without snapping. Present your finished product and impress others with your Illustrator skills. This technique is helpful when you need control over fine details, like in logo design for example.

Auto snap can be helpful for quickly aligning objects in Illustrator, but there are times when you'll want to remove this function. Thankfully, it's easy to enable snapping or disable it at any time.