Apex Legends Tap Strafe Guide: How to Do

The Apex Legends tap strafe is one of the best examples of how movement can often times be the skill gap that separates the casual players from the high-ranked warriors in a final fight.

Especially in a game predicated so heavily on movement such as Apex Legends, the tap strafe can turn a dire 1v3 gank situation into a prolonged fight that allows the solo player to isolate 1v-1s and win the match. Here's how to tap strafe in Apex Legends.

Apex Legends Tap Strafe Guide: How to Do

Unfortunately, as with most movement techniques in Apex Legends, the tap strafe isn't possible on a controller, so try this out on a mouse and keyboard if you have the means to do so.

You’ll also want to bind the "Move Forward" key bind to mouse scroll wheel up or down as it makes the tap strafe much easier to perform consistently.

The tap strafe technique in Apex Legends is essentially a combination of air strafing and bunny hopping. The upside to tap strafing rather than doing regular side jumps is that it allows you to make way sharper and faster turns than what your enemies are expecting you to.

Here's how to learn the tap strafe:

1. Perform a slide jump by sprinting forward, crouching, and jumping at the right time then hold one of your strafe keys depending on which direction you want to go.
2. At the peak of the jump, flick the mouse wheel scroll up or down (whichever one you binded Move Forward to) while holding the strafe key without moving the mouse. If you do it right, you’ll notice a diagonal pull in the direction you’re facing.
3. Lastly, once you're consistently doing that, move your mouse in the direction of the pull while spamming your mouse scroll wheel and holding a strafe key.

While it sounds counterintuitive to spam the "Move Forward" command to make a sharp turn, as Youtuber Fingle mentioned in their video, it's because the game's engine was coded so that each time the move forward key is pressed and released, it slightly changes the direction of your momentum. Thus, doing it multiple times in quick succession can result in a full 180-degree turn.

Once you've learned the tap strafe, feel free to use the move to fly around a corner during a last-second escape, change direction off of an Octane jump pad or simply turn around and snap on an unsuspecting enemy behind you.

For more on Apex Legends, feel free to check out our coverage on the latest fan-made feature concepts for future updates such as a dual-wielding hop-up and a UI fix for shield swaps.