
SensibleSideButtons – side navigation for third-party mice in macOS - accrual
https://sensible-side-buttons.archagon.net
======
ImaCake
I am a big fan of rectangle[0] for bringing windows style windows management
to macOS. Gives you a set of shortcuts you can use to put windows where you
want them on the screen. It is crazy to me that this is not standard on macs.

0\.
[https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle](https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle)

~~~
bbx
I've been using BetterSnapTool for years:
[https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/bettersnaptool/id417375580](https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/bettersnaptool/id417375580)

It's super cheap, and on top of the regular shortcuts, you can create custom
shortcuts with their own specific positions, and it saves them per screen. I
currently have a dozen of custom shortcuts, which is super handy for an
ultrawide 38 inch screen.

~~~
mthoms
FWIW, most (all?) of BetterSnapTool's functionality is included with
BetterTouchTool. BTT is an amazing utility... worth every penny.

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donatj
Through Apples settings you can, with no extra software, rebind them to
Mission Control All Apps and App Windows.

I personally find this more useful for quickly changing Windows and moving
then between spaces.

~~~
wildrhythms
I don't know why, but I have a Logitech G MX518, and this doesn't work all the
time. I assign Mouse Button M4 to activate mission control, but for some
reason it doesn't do anything when I click it. I tried assigning M5, still
nothing. It used to work normally, pre-Mojave. Any idea what's going on?

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darekkay
I've switched to Mac around 1 year ago and I was disappointed to see that
additional mouse keys were not supported out of the box. I've been using
SensibleSideButtons ever since.

~~~
Hamuko
This is from the same company that thinks that a one-button mouse is a really
good idea.

~~~
edejong
At the time it was quite sensible. Many in the target audience were computer
illiterate or beginners. The context menu is not discoverable and is counter
intuitive to the point and touch metaphor. In addition, most of the right
mouse button actions can be replaced by a two click alternative. Finally, the
modifier keys can be used for power users.

~~~
latortuga
This seems to conflict with the long-standing reputation that Macs were for
designers.

~~~
silon42
Graphical designers vs UI designers...

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n3k5
Interesting! I had to deal with a related problem several times — I often want
this from my Logitech mouse:

> _I discovered that the side buttons emitted standard M4 and M5 commands just
> as they did in Windows_

But there's no way of setting that up in Logitech's ‘Control Center’; ‘middle
click’ is as fancy as that gets. If I'm lucky, I can use Control Center to set
up a custom configuration for the specific application in question and make
mouse buttons emulate keyboard events, then map those hotkeys to the desired
actions within the application. But if the program doesn't allow custom
hotkeys for triggering something that's meant to be done with extra mouse
buttons, I'm pretty much out of luck.

You don't even get the standard mouse button events when you don't install
Control Center at all — then the extra buttons (on my particular older model;
no idea about current Logitech products) do nothing at all :(

So the funny thing is: I'd need a ‘sensible side buttons’ hack that does the
exact opposite of this one.

~~~
brirec
I can recommend Steermouse[0]. It gave me control over the upper buttons on my
Kensington Slimblade

~~~
voltaireodactyl
+1 for Steermouse — I find it to be the perfect midway point between something
basic like Sensible, and something highly complex like USB overdrive.

~~~
appleiigs
Steermouse has high CPU usage (up to 5%) when moving the mouse.

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bangonkeyboard
Ironically, iPadOS now has better built-in support for multiple mouse buttons
than macOS: [https://aws13-customer-care-assets.s3-us-
west-2.amazonaws.co...](https://aws13-customer-care-assets.s3-us-
west-2.amazonaws.com/CC%20Graphics/AssistiveTouch%20Devices/Mouse14.jpg)

------
torb-xyz
I really like the idea, but personally I got better results simply binding
back and forward buttons to keyboard macros for 'ctrl -' and 'ctrl shift -'
using Logitech‘s G-Hub software.

The shortcuts 'ctrl -' and 'ctrl shift -' are the default for 'go back' and
'go forward' being supported even in many apps (including that don't support
the gestures), and since they are keyboard shortcuts you can usually add
support for them in apps by rebinding the shortcuts for back and forward (or
anything else you want to bind in that particular software).

------
xoa
I'm still using ControllerMate for keyboard, mouse, and general USB-device
control on the Mac but to my extreme disappointment it seems to be a dead
project at this point. While its GUI is arguably a touch funky, it's always
been an incredibly powerful and unique tool able to do both rebinding and
extremely complex macros with customized controls for any application. I'm
glad there are other tools continuing to be developed to help fill some tiny
holes but it's a shame it couldn't be kept up, or if fully abandoned open
sourced.

~~~
appleiigs
I love ControllerMate, but I think Catalina is first macos it doesn't support.
It was the first program I found which allowed me to edit mouse acceleration
with a custom curve. I made the Mac mouse feel the same as a Window mouse.

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Hammershaft
MacOS generally is the best laptop OS and the worst desktop OS.

Half baked mouse support, awful windows management with incongruent fullscreen
functionality, half baked multi monitor integration, terrible
thermals/performance, and the removal of anti-aliased text made MacOS a
generally poor desktop experience for me.

Some of these problems can be ameliorated by third party apps, but I get the
impression the desktop experience (and maybe more generally MacOS) has not
been a concern at Cupertino for some time.

~~~
CharlesW
> _MacOS generally is the best laptop OS and the worst desktop OS._

I'm afraid I don't understand the premise, given that the experience is the
same.

~~~
cheeze
I was always a 'laptop only' guy at work, but since COVID I've used my (multi
thousand dollar) MBP as a desktop primarily.

The number of random apps that I have to install because of odd quirks that
don't work like I'd want/expect. The most egregious IMO is no support for
mouse4/5 as back/forward (seriously, it's 2020.... every mouse has some form
of theses unless explicitly designed not to), but it goes past that. The first
two months of using my mac as a desktop, about weekly I would run into the
case that something wouldn't work as expected, I'd google it, and find a
stackexchange post where someone is like "yeah that behavior is intentional,
no way to change it, by the way I wrote this little open source tool to fix
this."

My mac sits on my desk, but faces opposite of me because I want to be able to
charge it in the right port, not the left. Left port seems to make my
kernel_task go crazy. Two monitors (using an HP workstation thunderbolt dock)
seem to make the fans go nuts as well.

Maybe I need a desktop form of Apple hardware, but lol $5999.

Luckily the OS is somewhat extensible, but I fully agree that the desktop
experience feels half baked at best. Easily the worst out of Windows, OSX, and
Ubuntu (defaults).

~~~
GekkePrutser
Another big annoyance: you can't turn on natural scrolling for trackpads but
have it off for the mouse. The two separate settings are inexplicably linked.

~~~
raihansaputra
Sadly, another open-source-tool-bandaid is the solution. Karabiner-Elements
can define per-device settings for scroll direction. Overkill (considering all
of its feature set), but works.

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fidrelity
As a Mac user who has not fully bought into their ecosystem this is an
important productivity tool for me. Also I find it sad how such basics are
missing from OSX.

~~~
read_if_gay_
Yeah. Nowadays it feels like macOS is designed mostly for touchpads.

~~~
m463
Maybe it is a war on the cursor.

~~~
read_if_gay_
iPadOS just got one though. I think they’re just pushing gestures.

------
headmelted
My main gripe since buying a MBP last year is the sheer amount of third party
applications I need to install in order to restore basic functionality.

I guess most users never discover these limitations but between this, the
absence of window snapping (and associated key shortcuts), and the terrible
external monitor support it’s hard not to regret the move when I stare at my
(admittedly very pretty) laptop.

I get that most reviewers aren’t really heavy users, and seem to think (like
Apple) that a “pro” user is someone who works exclusively in photo and video
editing, but I need to get my work done.

It’s really disheartening that they don’t seem to understand these types of
problems.

But hey, at least they’re giving us Escape keys back.

~~~
GuB-42
Serious question, why are you using a Mac? Are you developing for Apple
products?

Because indeed, most people I see using macs professionally tend to be artists
(photo and video editors but also musicians, designers, architects,...). But
from my experience tech workers and engineers are more likely to use PCs
unless there is some special need (ex: iOS dev).

Edit: Downvoted, as expected. But it is not a troll. I recognize that MacBook
pros have really nice features, like a second to none trackpad, nice screen,
nice SSD,... Plus it looks good and it "just works". Artists like it a lot and
I understand them. But for tech and engineering work, ThinkPads seem to be
preferred. They are robust laptops with great keyboards and better
connectivity. If computing power is required, powerful desktops and
workstation class laptops tend to be used. Finally, for office work, Macs are
often considered too expensive.

~~~
cassianoleal
I've been an IT consultant for many years. I have been using MacBooks since
around 2009. After an initial bumpy migration to macOS (OS X back then) after
at least 10 years of using Linux (mostly Debian) exclusively, I never looked
back.

It mostly just works and I can focus on writing my applications and operating
my systems. I get a nice UNIX-like ecosystem on the metal and almost
everything I need to write code I can get on Homebrew.

It runs Docker for those times when I want actual Linux locally, although I've
been using that less and less since I can build and run my containers on the
cloud.

I haven't counted but I suspect more than half of my IT colleagues use Macs,
and almost everyone else uses Linux. Windows is the exception, where the only
people crazy enough to inflict that upon themselves tend to be
.NET/C#/F#/Microsoft-oriented devs.

macOS is the most hassle-free experience you can get. I say that whilst
keeping a very close eye on Linux development since I'd like to break away
from Apple eventually. Unfortunately no Linux distro comes even close to Macs
in terms of simplicity and reliability.

------
andreash
Check out steermouse.jp. Solves the same problem. Been using it for many
years. Replaced crappy Razer software on my Mac.

~~~
nikteg
There's also [https://mousefix.org](https://mousefix.org) which has the extra
bonus in that it tries to solve the smooth scrolling problem that can occur
when using a mouse on a mac.

------
floatingatoll
For folks looking for more complex options than Back and Forward events,
USBOverdrive serves that need, but requires a kext. (It also fixes an issue
with older Razer mice not having working mouseover support on macOS due to,
iirc, their invalid M16 signaling.)

~~~
rubyn00bie
I've always had horrible experience purchasing things like this in that they
never stay working for long, are poorly supported when new versions of the OS
come out, or are just broken by default. How long have you been using it? How
are system upgrades? Is it reliable? Not trying to be an ass, it's just every
time I've tried shit like this in the past on someone's recommendation it's
been a fucking waste.

~~~
floatingatoll
I only use it because it has a driver fix for my broken-as-designed mouse, and
I don’t do complicated expert-user things to my Mac, so I honestly can’t say
whether it’ll work for you or not. I assume they have a trial and such, but
it’s been a while since I looked.

------
saltybytes
Had to switch to MBP last year due to work and have been using
SensibleSideButtons from the first day.

I am missing an "always on top" application to pin windows to the top layer -
like there is in most Linux distros. Anyone knows a little app that provides
this function?

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pandatigox
Huh, I use a Logitech M720 and never really thought about using the side
buttons until now. I did a little experiment, and BetterTouchTool does support
the side buttons as triggers. I guess it's the start of a deep rabbit hole for
me...

~~~
bloopernova
I recommend page up and page down. It's quicker than using the scroll wheel.

------
limeblack
I'm fairly certain the side buttons can be programmed using Karabiner
Elements[1]. If so Karabiner Elements has a lot more options.

[1]: [https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/docs/help/how-
to/mouse-b...](https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/docs/help/how-to/mouse-
button/)

~~~
Longhanks
Did you actually read the article? It is about why a simple remapping is not
sufficient or at least has some caveats.

~~~
limeblack
I’ll admit I could not and still can’t get the videos to load so I’m not 100%
sure of the behavior this has. Karabiner Elements has complex modifications
I’ll sit done at my Mac later and check for sure.

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rcarmo
This is some pretty nice detective work. I need to check if my M720 does the
same as the MX.

~~~
kranner
Another Logitech M720 user here. I had to uninstall Logitech's Options app on
Mac because I found (via opensnoop) that it was capturing Cmd-Alt-Shift-A and
Cmd-Alt-Shift-S (which I was already using with Moom). I couldn't find out why
Options was capturing these shortcuts; I asked Logitech on Twitter but they
never responded.

------
thewebcount
> SensibleSideButtons lives in your menu bar.

No! This looked so useful, but there's so much crap in the menubar now. A pref
pane would be better.

~~~
appleiigs
There is an option you can click so it doesn't show up in menu bar.

