How to get perfect palm rejection on your tablet

These are three criteria you need to meet in order to have perfect palm rejection while writing or drawing on your tablet:

1. You need an active stylus. Basically, your tablet needs to know that you're using a stylus and not your finger.
2. You need a tablet that can support an active stylus.
3. You need an app that supports strict palm rejection

Have an active stylus

There are many styluses out there in the market and it can be confusing and difficult to know which are the active styluses.

The most common active styluses are Apple Pencil, Samsung S Pen, Microsoft Surface Pen, Huawei M Pencil, Lenovo Active Pen and some of the Adonit Bluetooth styluses. Many of these active styluses will support pressure sensitivity.

When in doubt, always look for a stylus that's recommended by the manufacturer of the device/tablet you're using. If there's no recommended stylus, chances are that device does not support active stylus.

When you get a stylus and the specification mentions support for all touchscreen devices, chances are that's not an active stylus. Most active styluses will mention specific brand or model support.

If you happen to use a stylus where you can see the cursor when the tip is hovering above the display, that's good because that's an active stylus.

Your tablet needs to support an active stylus

Not all tablets will support active styluses.

All the current iPads can be used with the Apple Pencil (active stylus).

Most Samsung tablets that support the S Pen (active stylus) will mostly likely come with the S Pen included. If your Samsung phone or tablet does not come with the S Pen, chances are it's not going to work with the S Pen even if you have one.

Turn on strict palm rejection

When writing with an active stylus, sometimes you can still leave behind stray marks. When you draw only to discover minutes later that you have a stray mark somewhere, removing the stray mark can be tedious.

Certain drawing and writing apps has the strict palm rejection feature. Strict palm rejection may also go by different names in different apps. Basically, strict palm rejection turns off finger gestures and makes the app only accept pen input, thereby give you perfect palm rejection.

See the finger icon on the left? That's the strict palm rejection mode available on Android version of Wacom Bamboo Paper. The same app on iPad, at time of my writing, does not have this feature.

Certain apps call it palm rejection.

Microsoft OneNote calls it Draw with Touch.

Procreate (iPad) calls it Disable Touch Actions.

Some apps have strict palm rejection permanently turned on.

So just turn on strict palm rejection, or whatever it's called, and you will have perfect palm rejection.

If you are not using the right stylus and tablet, then unfortunately chances are your tablet is just not going support palm rejection.