I wonder if there is any real need for smaller grids in schematic editor.
I have used smaller grids when in symbol editor.
In schematic editor I often use the CTRL key when moving text for example, but I have not found a need for smaller grids.
Right now I am disappointed that I cannot set the schematic grid to pi mm. I was hoping for some dessert. 
I moved this off the FAQ.
Is there a real need?
I vote yes. 
I’m used to them. I like them. I would complain if they went.
Kicad 7.99 only offers 4 as default, but you can create as many as you wish in both the X & Y axes.
I use 1 mil for text, as I like to get the resistor values in the centre of the box… no wriggles for me. 
Also it saves my left finger from RSI and I can use that finger to scratch an itch or hold a cup or wipe my fevered brow whilst drawing.
Anyway, as soon as you get rid of everything except 50 mil, someone will realize some other grid is of vital importance.
And what about that poor soul who converts everything in the Kicad libraries to work on his 42 mil grid?
Fundamental problem: That does not work with a zig zag resistor. I just realized that by “wriggles” you were referring to the right side up resistor symbol. Why not center your text with the CTRL key?
When I was involuntarily retired, I was using (I think it was 5.99) but now I do not have the time to play with developmental versions. I do not see the ability to set custom grids in 7.0.9. Am I missing something? I want my pi. Google Chrome has given me too many cookies already. 
But I was hit a few weeks ago by a 2 bit crook Two-bit crook - Idioms by The Free Dictionary, so my version is a 62 bit version.
BTW Express.sch is a rudimentary EDA tool. But it does allow custom grids in the schematic capture tool.
User Defined Grid: beside Current Grid in Grid Settings.
Explained above. I may develop RSI. I may get thirsty. I may have beads of sweat landing on my keyboard from the exertions of creating schematics that cause my fingers to slide to wrong keys.
As 42 is the answer to “Life, the Universe and Everything” it must therefore follow that it is also the answer to Schematics.
Douglas Adams knew stuff. Google him.
Maybe if Kicad changed everything to 42 mil grid, schematics would be made without any trouble. 
I only use 100-mil grid on schematics plus CTRL for tweaking text. For my needs I have no need for any tighter drawing, except building symbols – I drop down to whatever finer grid is needed for symbol shapes, and then back to 100 (more often than I’d like I find a pin that got nudged off the 100-mil pin grid, and have to go fix that).
I use mm in pcb. After 40 years of mils, which I really quite liked, I finally realize what a perfect unit a mm is. Now the cm – that seems like a superfluous unit to me.
I suppose that if you use only symbols that use a 100 mil grid that can work OK. I think that many of my own symbols use 50 mil grid and that many of the KiCad symbols might do that also.
I have been mostly in the habit of thinking in engineering notation terms. So when I am doing my own projects and schematic/BOM, I show a 49.9K resistor as just 49.9e3. The advantage of that is that a BOM in Excel ; Excel reads that as a number so it works well and I can easily sort my passives in value order. Metric is nice that way (just use meters and let the exponents go wherever they need to go!!) but then I think SOICs have a 0.05 inch pin pitch, and I think of 0603 and 1206 (for example) inch sized passive SMT components.
I was lucky.
My country changed to metric in my mid teenage years. The changeover was known and taught at schools for some years in advance, so I spent all my school years up to university having to use both systems and convert between them. You never forget that stuff.
Now days I still just swap from one system to the other, whichever is the most convenient at the time.
Normal practice is to go for either metric or imperial decimal. I refuse to use 8 X 1.27 mm when I can use 8 X 0.1 inch for the same result. By the same token, I refuse to use 8 X 18.5 mils when I can use 8 X .5 mm
And the span of the foliage of the tree in my avatar is two chains (40 metres)
During my life I’ve been using meter, decimeter, centimeter, millimeter and micrometer in all kind of practical situations. I mostly never use imperial units and mil was totally unknown to me until I bumped into it in software like KiCAD. I hope the strategy also in KiCAD is that SI units are the future and imperial units fade away by time (but could still be used by conversion - SI units must and should be the fundamental base).
KiCad uses nanometers as the base measurement unit. There are exactly 25,400,000 nm per inch, so the conversion is exact.
For a newly-drawn schematic, the grid units are irrelevant. The supplied library symbols all have “pins” on a 50 mil (1.27 mm) grid, and attempting to change the grid to a “round” number of millimeters will cause serious issues attempting to connect wires to pins.
Since KiCad can import schematics drawn by other programs that support grids other than 50 mil, it’s essential for KiCad to be able to use other grid units. Otherwise, all the imported symbols would have to be reworked to move the pins onto a 50 mil grid. This makes the idea of limiting KiCad schematics to a 50 mil grid a non-starter.
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