The deflection of light by acoustic surface waves in multimode waveguides is studied in the present work. Conditions on deflection of single‐mode and multimode optical power are derived, and expressions are presented for the number of resolvable spots and the efficiency that may be obtained with these scattering processes. A description of the waveguide analog to anisotropic Bragg scattering is given, and the advantages and disadvantages of this approach are discussed in detail.