For decades, the ability to sweep a beam of light over a particular area, which is taken for granted in devices such as laser printers and barcode scanners, has relied on mechanical solutions. However, emerging applications of ‘optical beam scanning’, including biomedical imaging, consumer displays, quantum information and the sensing of 3D surroundings through lidar, demand a combination of speed, robustness, compactness and precision that conventional mechanical systems, such as rotating mirrors and galvanometers, struggle to deliver1. Writing in Nature, Saha et al.2 report an optical beam scanner based on photonic ‘ski jumps’: nanoscale, light-confining channels that are bent vertically out of a chip using cantilevers, and the direction of which can be moved mechanically using electronic control.…