After testing & buying everything out there, I settled with LinearMouse [0]:
- FOSS (a plus but don't mind paying)
- Control of scrolling mode settings different for Horizontal vs Vertical
- Can disable mouse acceleration (I think only CursorSense can also do this).
- Universal back and forward buttons (replaces SensibleSideButtons)
- Settings are different per input device, scrolling can be per app
I cannot stand any mouse acceleration.
And I don't understand how people can work with it.
You have to retrain the muscle memory each time you switch OS.
Because it makes no sense to design a mouse pointer with unknown range in such a way that it is linearly mapped to range on a viewport.
Users need full range of precision. No one wants to wave their arm around several times to get to the other side of the screen because someone thought it was an excellent idea to make sure every millimeter was mapped to every pixel.
And no one wants a pointer so imprecise that the slightest nudge sends you 400 points left right up or down.
There is no universally agreed upon acceleration curve. So what, do you complain that not every single vehicle has the same foot peddle resistance?
> There is no universally agreed upon acceleration curve
The gold standard (for my generation) was set by microsoft with the Mouse Wheel Optical 1.1a and IntelliMouse Explorer 3.
It was 400 DPI mouse on 90-120 PPI screens.
Higher PPI on screen lead to higher DPI on the mouse. No need for Windows/MacOS/Linux to implement their own stupid acceleration charts.
> So what, do you complain that not every single vehicle has the same foot peddle resistance?
I've heard people complain about the responsiveness of their brakes for sure.
I didn't realize people actually wanted this! I thought it was just a thoughtless default from hardware manufacturers. Every time I activate back or forward via a special mouse button (or via gestures!), it's an annoying mistake.
I would much rather have (and do have) next/prev tab buttons than browser back and forward!
I'll second LinearMouse, though! It's nice that there's a free solution for this now. Apple seems to periodically break third-party tools that fix their mouse acceleration problems.
Same here, I always disable the back/forward page functionality. I only ever use my side buttons and trackpad swipes to change between Mission Control spaces
Just FYI, re-training muscle memory is how you avoid RSI with keyboards/mice. Its important to switch up your input devices every few months and give the muscles in your hands a chance to de-calcify from the previous ergonomics.
That seems a bit dubious, can you point to any research which backs up this statement? Intuitively it seems to me like you would need to be switching input devices extremely often to avoid RSI (as in, once every few MINUTES rather than every few months).
Personally, the only real solution to fix RSI has been strength training & regular breaks during work.
I'd love to find some authoritative papers on the subject but this is based on 40 years of experience with the subject of computing and RSI, and I have never had any reason to question it because it works for me and was the best advice I ever got from a physiotherapist: change your keyboard often and you'll avoid RSI.
It works, that's all I can say about it. RSI problems go away whenever I switch keyboard/mouse setups.
I'm in the same boat as you. I regularily switch between high and low keyboards, high and low profile mice, different keyboards/mice at work/home and in addition I switch between right and left handed mouse whenever I feel like it, sometimes even several times an hour. At one point I had two mice at on my desk and grabbed the one which hand was free at the moment. Never had RSI in my 30+ years of active computing though this doesn't prove anything, maybe I'm just lucky. But still, I find it quite liberating to not depend on your must-have setup.
I've reached the point where I can basically work with everything thrown at me. I have preferences, yes, but I'm not the type of person who has to have perfect setup or else nothing gets done.
This has not been my experience at all. For me, I had hand and wrist issues until I stuck with an ergonomic keyboard (Kinesis Advantage2). It's been like 6-7 years now and I've had no problems since.
I've used an Imak Smartglove w/ Thumb for more than a dozen years. It helps a lot. Also a Kensington Expert Mouse, a keyboard tray, and a Steelcase Leap v2.
Same here. Finally, Sonoma will have a mouse acceleration disable setting. This should be good for battery life as tools like LinearMouse all report somewhat significant CPU usage while moving the pointer.
No. Every similar app (including the here posted Mac Mouse Fix) stops working, when more than one user is logged in at the same time. So I have two user accounts on my mac, one for work one personal and when both users are logged in and the app is started from both users the scrolling stops working all together
It looks like this competes with Mos.app[0]. Honestly, I'm not sure how folks use non-magic mice without this.
If you use macOS on a desk setup, I still recommend the magic trackpad over everything else; macOS is just designed around trackpads. It might not be the best for ergonomics, but if that's your concern and you work as a programmer, you should just optimize your workflows around the keyboard instead of the mouse.
Totally unrelated, but since we are talking about QOL tools on macOS, i thoroughly recommend BetterDisplay[0]
It enables reting scaling functionality on any external monitor, regardless of the resolution or the Apple compatibility.
It's great for 2k monitors that are totally hiDPI but are not deemed enough by Apple, and even for FHD secondarh displays that don't need that much display real state so you can use that real state to scale everything nicely.
+1 for BetterDisplay. Truly a game changer for using MacOS.
Also nice is BetterMouse [1] (unrelated author). It's similar to the OP application in some ways. And it uniquely has a way to flip between spaces on MacOS that has very low delay, without breaking SIP. No idea how they did that.
>has a way to flip between spaces on MacOS that has very low delay
Lol the way it seems to do this is by simulating swiping on the trackpad really hard. I.e. create a synthetic CGEvent with the undocumented but well-known fields set to treat it as a fluid swipe event, then just put a large number in the swipe amount.
I had picked up SwitchResX a few years back for this same scenario, 4k displays that Apple didn't bless so made things blurry when scaling. Flicking the switch fixes it.
If you’re a mac shop I recommend the LG ultrafine 4K. It’s the only 24" 4K display so you get 186 ppi. It has thunderbolt, display port and 85w power over usb c, with a few additional ports on the back. It also integrates with macOS brightness/volume keys.
Ah, I see. I use a normal cheap generic gaming mouse with my Mac specifically because I hated the 'magic' mouse and trackpad. I just want a normal mouse that works properly, the same as it does on Windows and Linux machines, without automagically doing stuff I didn't want it to do.
I really despise hidden secret swipe controls and the double/triple tap thing.
> Honestly, I'm not sure how folks use non-magic mice without this.
I use a non-magic mouse, it seems fine to me.
I remember in the past there was this problem with scroll direction being the inverse of what I expected and I had to use some app to change it just for my mouse and not the trackpad, but with my current setup the mouse behaves as I would expect, not sure if it's due to this mouse's firmware or a change in MacOS or something, I am curious what advantages these apps offer since I seem to be the target audience?
I don't really see the point in these gestures to switch spaces etc., and scrolling / mouse movement seems fine to me, what am I missing?
Edit: I just realized, my mouse works as expected because I have it set to inverted in BetterTouchTool, which I originally installed for other reasons, so I suppose I do see the point in these Apps
> you should just optimize your workflows around the keyboard instead of the mouse.
The one issue I have is that out of the box, MacOS does not let you use the keyboard for all of the actions required. It doesn't even expose some actions to be able to b̶o̶n̶d̶ bind keys to, and you have to use 3rd party tools just to navigate with your keyboard.
Interesting - I'm a macOS power user (at least I would think so, having used it since 2003). Not really using my mouse all that much. Mostly I use keyboard shortcuts when possible. I don't really like trackpads and mice too much, and macOS is still very powerful. What do you need the trackpad so much for?
Unnatural scroll wheels is the only app I need for using a regular mouse, which it looks like mos also has, but I don't need the other stuff. I use a magic trackpad in office and a mouse at home.
I tried using the magic trackpad. I liked it a lot, but something about how I held my pinky and ring finger kind of "tucked in" eventually lead to pain and I had to switch.
Most of my RSI seemed to be from having my arms too far apart or something, and I fixed that by dropping my mouse and getting one of the 60% apple keyboards and sticking a trackpad onto it with this https://www.amazon.com/Twelve-South-MagicBridge-Extended-Con...
Not really responding to your comment except as a jumping off point for an ergonomics discussion
I've been using 60%/65% keyboards for almost a decade now, usually something with an HHKB layout, and yeah it's amazing how much of an improvement it is to not have to keep your mousing arm pushed so far out if you want your alpha cluster centered. The comfort improvement is significant.
I had the same issue with the Apple keyboard. Having my wrists turned up all day long was painful. Switched to a Logitech keyboard with a wrist rest that also laid flat instead of having the upper row elevated, and it all went away.
> you should just optimize your workflows around the keyboard instead of the mouse.
That's quite patronising. Tools should grow around the user, not the other way around.
Trackpad is just wrong for text based applications. For instance, you can't precisely select large amounts of text and navigation, placing the cursor precisely is just a nightmare.
A pro tip for precisely selecting text on a trackpad: you can click in one place, then scroll or move the cursor freely, then shift-click somewhere else. This works in applications with a caret like a text editor, but also in non-editable text in most applications.
That most of the time doesn't work, because it somehow loses where was the beginning of your selection and you also don't have any visual feedback. This also doesn't work on non-editable text.
Yeah, my thoughts exactly. How does this work? What's it like to use this? Seems like one of the most important possible questions to answer, but the website says nothing.
I just installed it, here's what I can set: bindings for the middle mouse button (click/hold/double click/click and drag), for clicking mouse buttons 4 and 5, smooth scrolling on/off, scroll speed, and (the reason I installed it): you can invert the scrolling direction just for the mouse.
Yup! Came to say the same thing. Seems to fix a problem I have, but I have no clue how it does it, and that doesn't pass the threshold for me to install it
The main thing it fixes for me is that I can now use a regular Logitech mouse and scroll just like on Linux and Windows. Before it scrolled too slow (on pixel level) and even when scrolling fast it went slow (no matter the settings on Mac OS). If I let the Logi MX Anywhere 3 wheel roll freely it scrolled too fast. This tool fixed the annoying scrolling issues I had.
This seems to be the main feature it does.
The other is that you can reprogram what the middle button (the scroll wheel click) does.
Same with botton 4 and 5 (default back and forth between pages).
Definitely not. This is intended for those "gaming" PC mice with extra buttons. I tried it with mine (I normally use a magic trackpad but sometimes, rarely, I need a real mouse) and it works really nice. The only thing I'm missing is horizontal scrolling but I have no idea how to fit it in there.
edit: it can scroll horizontally if you hold shift while scrolling
They're probably scared to write this but Apple cripples every mouse other than "Magic Mouse" to make "Magic Mouse" seem good despite being a piece of shit. This uncripples other mice.
No probably not. I’ve been using this app for years, it lets me program the extra buttons on my Logitech mouse to switch spaces or open Mission Control and such, among other things
No, it's for any mouse with a middle button. Or if you happen to use both the touchpad and a mouse, like maybe on a Macbook, in which case you can actually set the scrolling direction for trackpad and mouse separately - which is otherwise not possible, really annoying.
This tool exists to make scrolling on other mouse devices feel more like it does on the Magic Mouse. Since you already have that, you don't need the tool.
Doesn’t say what it actually does for what kinds of mice, at least from a quick scroll.
I have been using BetterTouchTool for years to program the extra buttons on my Logitech mice and add a three finger tip-tap tab switching gesture to the trackpad. Works beautifully.
I used this software for a long time, and it is targeted at people using a regular mouse but still want to have a trackpad ish experience (and making mac more mouse friendly). Things that I used day to day: smooth scrolling, horizontal scrolling, and middle click enhancements. It is free and open source.
And it supports lots of stuff and just seamlessly works in the background. And it has neat detailed options for custom shortcuts on any buttons and scrolling tweaking. It helped me a lot with many mice setups along the years.
New license is 19.99$ nowadays though. Still worth it imo!
I'm surprised not to see more people use my setup, mouse in primary hand, Magic Trackpad along the opposite side of the keyboard for the other.
It's mostly to enable gestures and padding / swiping in macOS, but its also pretty nice getting to pan with one hand and use the pointer with the other.
I read the website but can’t tell — does it support pinch to zoom? Would make life easier when using Figma - I currently have to take my hand off of my mouse and put it on my laptop, which is on a stand :-/
I've started using this and also tried LinearMouse and LogiOptions. Using two Macs interchangeably with two different Logitech mice, I somehow fail to get a consistent experience across all setups. Scrolling behavior also 'feels' different depending on the application browser vs code editor, etc.)
And then there's some weird scroll wheel wobble on my MX Master 3, which gets interpreted differently depending on what software I use and the occasional disconnect even if the receiver is right next to the mouse...
It's so crazy that macOS can't get mouse to work properly. Like you have to install dedicated apps for a scroll wheel so they reverse direction of scrolling to match the trackpad and still you cannot get to control the scrolling properly.
Then these apps tend to stop working randomly or reverse direction and you have to turn it off then randomly direction reverses again etc.
Mouse is the most frustrating experience on Macs. It's bizarre.
This is the opposite of what I want. Is there a fix for the defectively-large trackpad on Mac laptops, which causes spurious right-clicks, deselections, and cursor jumps while you're typing?
The fix would be to deactivate the outer inch or so of the trackpad.
I can only imagine the overly-complicated and ultimately unreliable touch-rejection logic Apple has ladled onto this thing, to work around a problem they created.
I recently diagnosed a very weird problem on my M32 MacBook Pro 13" where the _HDMI_ cable I was using caused my Logitech mouse (with 2.4GHz dongle) to stutter and disconnect/reconnect. Nothing to do with the display, my adapter/dongle, other peripherals, or other running apps. Still don't know _why_ that HDMI caused those issues, because the display was fine, but... MacOS is just sometimes obtusely weird!
Similar thing happened to me with my Apple TV 4K. When I was watching it, Bluetooth devices in the vicinity (including its remote!) became choppy and unreliable. Turned out to be the fault of the HDMI cable! Replaced it and the problems all disappeared.
Possibly... But I don't understand why that particular HDMI cable was causing issues with my USB devices -- with no visual artifacts or latency or other issues being evident on my screen.
But you're right -- I was possibly too quick to snark about MacOS when the real culprit is more likely the cheap random HDMI cable I used. :)
Most likely the HDMI cable has significant signal leakage (poor or missing shielding), and the signal has some component (or harmonic) in the same spectrum as your dongle.
I'd assume they mean the mice that connect to the PC via Bluetooth, but you have to connect a separate (tiny) USB to the PC first in order for the two to connect.
If you want something really flexible for HID customizations on MacOS, I would recommend ControllerMate. Graphical language that takes in and generates USB HID events.
(I've been wanting the equivalent for Windows or Linux)
All I really want is the ability to have inverted scrolling on the track pad and have normal scrolling when I use a mouse wheel. For some reason MacOS doesn't support doing these even though it supports things like remapping certain keys on USB keyboards only.
Based on what I see on the website, I think some (if not all) of them can be done via custom key/gesture settings that supported by your mouse manufacturers (e.g. Logitech Options).
Mos + MX Master 3 has been everything I need. It takes some fiddling between Mos and Logi Options to get the scroll feeling good, but you can get there.
As bad as MacOS is the competition is generally worse. Windows and Linux laptops can't sleep/wake or power manage correctly, trackpad behavior is mediocre at best, bad HiDPI support, and so on. It's a lot easier to fix up some foibles in the desktop environment than it is to try and fix core OS issues.
macOS has the same sleep issues where sometimes it just doesn't. If you get a PC laptop that still supports S3 sleep in the BIOS it works fine. HiDPI support is a tradeoff. Windows can run into blurry apps but it works better on non 200ish PPI displays.
My M2 Macbook Air has been flawless about sleep, but I set "Wake for network access" to "Never" so maybe I'm just avoiding Apple's issues there. At least it can be disabled; with Windows Modern Standby it was impossible to completely prevent wakeup last I checked. And new laptops are dropping support for S3 sleep.
As for the HiDPI stuff, it's one example among many of Apple making sure basic functions work without friction. I don't even know what I traded off for that - my Macbook works with normal PPI screens just fine - but it was worth it. For another example, I recently had trouble pairing a bluetooth keyboard on Windows 11 because their new settings panel is missing functionality. In 2023, that is an absolutely wild issue to have.
For HiDPI because of the way Apple handles it something like a 27" 4K display (really the sweet spot of sharpness and price right now) will either have to be run at "Looks like 1080p" (which is huge at 27"), tiny native 4K or some non-integer scale leading to overall blurriness and problems from that (different thickness lines). To have it look really good you need a ~200ish PPI display which at 27" means 5K and all the added expense of that. It's not as big of a problem anymore but on lower end Intel Mac GPUs like the 2018 Mac Mini scaling a 4K display to "Look like 1440p" takes more than the GPU can really muster and animations lag horribly and drop frames all over the place. Windows does fractional scaling correctly, a straight line is a straight line, fonts are sharper and rendering 4K is always rendering 4K and not 5K taxing a crappy GPU. And sometimes you have to use a 3rd party app to even enable Apple's HiDPI support on some displays because for whatever reason Apple hasn't blessed it.
Apple also removed sub-pixel rendering in 10.14 so on non-HiDPI displays text looks particularly bad compared to Windows or Linux. They also for some mind boggling reason don't support volume control over HDMI/DP with most monitors which is infuriating.
And the fact you need to spend $2000+ to get a laptop from them that can handle 2+ external monitors is NUTS.
What issue did you have pairing a Bluetooth keyboard in Windows 11? I've done that and had no issues even with ones that want me to enter a pairing code.
Try it. Apple M-series laptops are by far the superior hardware on the market today.
TFA is about using a non-Apple mouse (because Apple mice are touch sensitive so you can do gestures on the mouse's surface).
The OS itself is a certified Unix with a proprietary layer on top. Honestly after years of using Linux I'm fine with that, because using Linux on an old Thinkpad might be fun but the UX is sub-par. Maybe next year will be the year of the Linux desktop but until then I've got better things to do than tweak my KDE config or wonder why wifi doesn't work after a suspend-resume.
I used PCs for decades before transitioning to Mac based laptops for work which I continued to use for the last 6 years. Due to the M1 laptops being poorly suited to my workflows, I have now changed back and am on a Linux powered Dell Precision laptop and am overall happy with the decision - though I had to compromise on a few things.
I dislike Apple and find a lot of their choices distasteful - but I just haven't been able to find a laptop that I could use portably that feels as nice (I like to work from cafes/libraries, so the docked experience doesn't matter - the Dell crushes in that context).
It's mostly the trackpad that does it, I can use a MBP trackpad for a full 8 hour work day and never think about reaching for a mouse.
By contrast, my Dell is better for my workflow in every way. Aside from the battery life, it compiles things in literally half the time, IO bound tasks are, no exaggeration, an order of magnitude faster.... but it feels so horrible to use.
The trackpad is physically exhausting to use and the speakers sound tinny like I am losing consciousness. The power adapter is enormous, heavy and essential.
I wish someone would just make a shameless 1:1 rip off of the MBP with first class Linux support. Haha, why is it so hard for OEMs to get the hint?
At the very least, OEMs like Dell could try using a MacBook and mimic the trackpad. Don't they have QA teams that tell them how bad it is?
> It's mostly the trackpad that does it, I can use a MBP trackpad for a full 8 hour work day and never think about reaching for a mouse.
This. Plus battery life. I don't generally spend whole days on my laptop, and for meeting someone for work for a couple hours you can just take the laptop, no charger, no mouse.
> I wish someone would just make a shameless 1:1 rip off of the MBP with first class Linux support. Haha, why is it so hard for OEMs to get the hint?
Isn't that - theoretically - the Dell Developer Edition something?
The problem is OEMs know to do hardware, not software. The trackpad in apples is made by the same manufacturer as in most of the oranges. It's the software that's different. Same for most of the other tweaks that make apples less annoying to use.
> OEMs like Dell could try using a MacBook and mimic the trackpad.
You know what's crazy about the trackpad situation? You can put Windows or Linux on a real live Macbook and the trackpad gets worse. Everybody except Apple just insists on being wrong about trackpads.
I think the Windows philosophy for UX is just "good enough so enterprise don't ditch Windows", which given its enterprise monopoly and very strong lock-in and almost complete lack of viable alternatives means they can do almost whatever (and looking at Windows 11, seems they do make use of that freedom). They don't have strong incentives to make their OS fun, as long as it sort of does the job. And even if they did try to fix trackpads, at the price point lots of corporate drone Windows laptops sell at, could they possibly include decent trackpad hardware?
Linux is kind of puzzling though, this has been a super glaring issue for what is now decades. Are the people who could fix this just set up to never ever leave the home row? Is it actually too hard for an open source endeavour like Desktop Linux?
With Bootcamp on the Intel MacBooks, Apple supplied trackpad drivers that made it about as good. There was also an open source trackpad driver that you could install.
I feel like all three major OSs are crap and have trade offs. It’s all about finding which one’s trade offs are ones you can live with. I can use any of the three, but each annoys me in different ways. I use macOS because I find it less annoying than Windows or Linux once I’ve set it up. The truly annoying bit is that each OS has a bit of exclusive software and a few exclusive features that are amazing… but I don’t want 3 OSs.
and the fact that among the 3, MacOS is the hardest to virtualize on any other platform (technically against their ToS to do so on non-Apple hardware too last I checked half a dozen years ago). This effectively puts a stop to most practical use within bigger companies; it’s a safer bet to just buy a few Mac minis and toss them on a rack shelf somewhere, and a lot less of a headache when that on person who figured out how to make it work leaves.
MacBook Pros definitely “do the trick” for hundreds of thousands of us software developers in Silicon Valley every day. Docker works fine on M1 MBPs and it’s not much of a chore to target amd64 with a Dockerfile eg
FROM --platform=linux/amd64 python:3.7-alpine
Plenty of the software that runs the internet is written, compiled, and tested on MacBooks, even if it may get rebuilt for production on some x86_64 server or AWS instance (possibly even an ARM-based Graviton instance).
I agree that MacBooks have gotten less “pro” and now seem to cater to college kids who probably don’t need them more than they do to folks like Digital Imaging Technicians working on movie sets, but they’re still quite popular for the latter, even if some level of Windows and Linux machines have started taking up some of the roles (especially for things like VFX, see eg https://vfxplatform.com/ ) and sound and music recording / production / editing (plus Windows has had Cubase for a very long time, and before that, plenty of studios had Cubase for the Atari 520ST and Atari 1040ST back in the late 80s).
I say some of it is still just plain bad - and I say it as someone who is considering a MacBook this year:
For example: the keys that Macs have instead of page up, page down, home and end still feels like four different "surprise me" buttons in every app I tried them in.
If you are OK with using a different window manager, Enlightenment has independent virtual desktops per monitor too.
Enlightenment versions since 17 have been a bit hit and miss for being stable vs. frustratingly buggy, though. Enlightenment 25 has been alright (version packaged in Bookworm (current Debian stable).
Who is complaining exactly? I think a developer identifying a weakness and building a tool to fix those weaknesses is great. Are you trying to say there aren't also tons of mouse tweaking software for Windows and Linux? Do you even know what this app does?
I typically buy gaming mice that don't necessarily have Mac support and just let macOS handle the mouse. It works sufficiently, not great but good enough for day to day stuff when I'm not using the trackpad.
I also use Windows for gaming and the built in mouse functionality is far from mind blowing. Not to mention that pretty much all 1st part mouse software on windows (and in general) is hot garbage. Ugly confusing UI, often slow and buggy and resource hogging.
For anyone interested in this App I would also suggest going to the Github page and checking the 3.0 Beta stuff which is completely different from the 2.0 version on their web page.
This app makes the scrolling really nice with a mouse it feels very much like the trackpad inertial scrolling.
The most interesting thing is you can assign different behaviors when you Click, Click and Hold, Double Click, Click and Drag, etc. various mouse buttons.
Other macOS mouse tweaking software I've tried are either too limited (ie. only adjusts scrolling, only adjusts mouse button assignment) or are way too complicated. I really don't want to have to keep track of multiple apps just to tweak the mouse. I like this app so far as it seem to cover everything with a nice simple UI.
[0]: https://linearmouse.app/