Turning off snap for text placement

Schematic
1

When I create a new text e.g. a wire color and ready to place close above the wire line, it snaps onto the line which I do not want at all. Even when I attempt to move while holding down Ctrl key, it is totally useless. It does not temporarily disable snapping. I have no absolute degree of freedom to move anywhere I want to go to place my text freely.

Left all 4 Grid Overrides features – Connected items, Wires, Text and Graphics being 50 mils as per KiCad’s recommended settings.

I’ve set Grid snap to ‘Never’ inside Preference settings. Likewise Magnetic Points under PCB Editor inside Preference settings. Neither has an impact.

Any assistance to my problem is appreciated. I am currently using version 9.0.1.

2

I don’t know if it will solve your problem but you should move to 9.0.3 as a first step.

3

See the snapping modifiers here: Schematic Editor | 9.0 | English | Documentation | KiCad

Hint: Ctrl probably isn’t the right modifier for the behavior you want :slight_smile:

4

Only the Connected Items and Wires need to be on a 50mil grid, all other items can be placed on (or off) any grid you like.

5

gkeeth: tried Shift modifier, no impactive change.

paulvdh: tried the suggestion, no impactive change either.

With Zoom in and careful enough, I can get close but not too close to wire line. if I get too clumsily close, it snaps to the wire line like an uncontrolled lasso. Not the best practical solution.

Have not try Piotr’s suggestion. Did 9.0.3 perhaps fix this problem? Anyone else to comment? Perhaps for a future version update for a motivating developer? Unfortunately I’m no developer, just an user.

6

Can you explain what you mean by this? I assumed you were talking about a label, but you aren’t really using KiCad terminology and I don’t want to guess what you’re doing.

Please give step by step instructions to recreate what you’re doing, e.g.

  1. press L hotkey
  2. Label dialog appears
  3. Type label name in text field
  4. press okay
  5. move label close to a wire in the schematic

(or whatever is accurate for your situation)

7

Kicad default settings are 50 mil for Connected items & Wires. Text is 10 mil and Graphics is 25 mil.

If you prefer something finer than 10 mil, you will have to add that preference to the Grid list.

ksnip_20250711-101254
ksnip_20250711-1012541039×697 75.3 KB

Here, I changed the Text to 5 mil. by first adding 5 mil to to the grids list using the + sign and filling the Grid Settings menu. This new grid then becomes available for use in the Grids & Grid Overrides list.

8

Yes, of course, changing grid settings does not change snap behavior.

But to go back to your first post:

What sort of texts are you creating here? As far as I know, labels are the only “text objects” that snap to wires, and they need to snap to the wires to be effective.

You can set wire colors in: Schematic Editor / File / Schematic Setup / Project / Net Classes, and with the settings in that dialog you can set real colors for the nets in the schematic, but that does not show as text in the schematic. It’s something quite different.

9

Sounds like you are using the label tool and not the text tool. On my setup text does not snap to anything, but the label (rightly) snaps to the lines.
Should be the highlighted tool
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