How to go about snapping?

[saif-ellafi]

Hey there!

Users of my app wish to have snapping while being zoomed out, but honestly I have no idea how it works, as it is really an accident for me that it exists at all :) How does it work, snaps to what exactly? could it work while zoomed in? Can it be disabled?

in my own experience, I find it annoying because currently in version 10, it feels like Snapping is resisting too much to my mouse, I have to really force it, but for some reason it is useful for users to place text and such.

What are the general thoughts on snapping and how can it be expanded, customized, or the sensitivity touched?

[hm21]

Hey Saif,

The snapping function was extended in version 10.2.0. Before that, layers only snapped to the center of the screen on the x and y axes, and if you rotated a layer, it snapped every 45 degrees. Since version 10.2.0, layers also snap when they're aligned on the same x or y axis as another layer.

To enable or disable this behavior, you can set the configs like this:

configs: ProImageEditorConfigs(
  helperLines: HelperLineConfigs(
    showLayerAlignLine: false,
    style: ...
  ),
),

Right now it doesn't work well when zoomed in, so I’ve disabled it for the time being. Maybe I’ll add it in the future.

Snapping is resisting too much to my mouse

Thanks for the feedback! I’ll keep that in mind and add a new parameter to HelperLineConfigs in the next version, probably called releaseThreshold. It’s currently set to 20, but a lower value should feel better.

[hm21]

@saif-ellafi Thanks for the video, it clearly shows that this is a major issue. The problem is that the layer snaps directly to the other layer after one is released, which shouldn’t happen. I’ll look for a solution and get back to you.

[hm21]

@saif-ellafi Okay, I’ve uploaded version 10.2.8, which feels much better now and no longer snaps when multiple layers share the same axis. I also fixed the HelperLineConfigs so they work correctly. For example, if you set showLayerAlignLine to false, it won’t show or snap anymore. The same goes for isDisabledAtZoom, which now properly disables snapping.

[saif-ellafi]

Hi @hm21 - Testing ^10.2.9-dev.2 I realize that there is still quite some resistance when there are multiple layers in the line. Did you notice this?

Not even with threshold at 2.0 I can break without quite some effort across multiple layers in the same horizontal line.

I think the "Acceleration" works funky. If you click and drag slowly, you can never break the line. If you click and move aggressively, it breaks it. But once you started "softly" it is very hard to break the helper line.

In the video you can see, there is "vibration" when I try to break the line, I think it is doing it once per layer in the line :) but I could be mistaken if this is desired. I feel it should resist me only once.

Screen.Recording.2025-07-11.at.10.39.51.mov

[hm21]

Thanks for the video, that helped a lot. I noticed you have multiple layers, but not all of them share exactly the same Y position. Some differ by 1–3 pixels. Last time, I changed it so that offsets with the same Y coordinate are ignored, but that still caused a resnap when they were just slightly off.

Now I’ve tried a new approach that should also handle this case. Could you test version 10.3.2-dev.1 and let me know if the issue still occurs?

[saif-ellafi]

Yes! It now rocks :) If you mind at all, my favorite setting was releaseThreshold: 5.0