<p>Actuation of ball-and-socket joints has been a challenge owing to the multiple degrees of freedom they possess. In the recent past, active ball and socket joints have been proposed but their sizes have generally been large. This paper describes the design and evaluation of a lockable miniaturized ball -and-socket joint. The joint employs a permanent-magnetic sphere seated in a socket, which can be locked magnetically and unlocked by means of dithering. In its locked state, the joint also possesses a high resistance to angular deflections, which is useful for potential biomedical and aerospace applications. Modeling and simulations have been performed in order to confirm that hysteresis can be eliminated by means of dithering. Finally, a miniaturized ball and socket joint with a ball of diameter 5&#xa0;mm is fabricated and is experimentally demonstrated to achieve much better linearity by applying dithering, with 6-times lesser dead-zone, and negligible hysteresis, in comparison to the case without dithering. Additionally, it is shown that the ball can be locked and unlocked for precise actuation by using the same dithering magnetic field.</p>