How to customize mouse buttons on Mac
Your mouse has more buttons than macOS knows what to do with. Give each one a job.
macOS can put Mission Control, app windows and the desktop on some mouse buttons. MacFixes lets any extra button do almost anything, with different actions per app.
Free in MacFixes.
What macOS gives you
In System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Mission Control → Shortcuts, macOS may show a second column of menus for your mouse, depending on the mouse, to open Mission Control, an app’s windows or the desktop. Mouse settings cover clicking, scrolling and tracking speed. Beyond that, extra buttons need the mouse maker’s software.
How MacFixes fixes it
- 1Turn on the fixOpen MacFixes Settings → Mouse & Trackpad and turn on “More mouse buttons” (or type its name into Search for a fix).
- 2Allow AccessibilitymacOS asks for Accessibility permission so MacFixes can catch the button and do its action.
- 3Pick an action per buttonMission Control, App Exposé, Show desktop, the Space to the left or right, a keyboard shortcut, media keys, opening an app or running a shortcut. Set them for all apps, or differently in one app.
Making a mouse feel at home on a Mac
A button that presses a keyboard shortcut can reach anything that has one, including shortcuts you make yourself. macOS has no key for dark mode, for example, but you can give it one in the Shortcuts app — and then a side button switches it. The same goes for MacFixes’ own shortcuts: put ⌃⇧⌘C on a button and one press starts the colour picker, ready for a click on the colour you want. Or put the shortcut you recorded for muting every microphone on a side button, and mute yourself on a call with a thumb, from any app.
Buttons are one half of how a mouse feels; the wheel is the other. macOS uses one scroll direction for the mouse and the trackpad, so if the wheel feels backwards while the trackpad feels right, set a different scroll direction for each. And if you work in 3D or CAD apps on a laptop, where the view orbits with a middle-button drag the trackpad doesn’t have, slide three fingers to orbit instead.
Permissions, and turning it off
“More mouse buttons” needs macOS’s Accessibility permission. macOS asks you, and you allow it once.
- Accessibility lets an app see and work the windows, menus and buttons of other apps, and click or type for you. You can see it, and take it back, in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility.
To stop using it, open MacFixes Settings → Mouse & Trackpad and use the switch on the “More mouse buttons” row.
Questions
Does it replace Mouse side buttons?
They work together. A button you leave on Default still goes Back and Forward if you’ve added Mouse side buttons.
Why doesn’t switching Spaces work?
It presses the shortcut set in System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Mission Control, so that shortcut has to be turned on there.
More fixes macOS doesn’t give you
One of 47 fixes and 10 apps in MacFixes. Every fix · Every app · Something else your Mac won’t do? Request it.
Customize mouse buttons with MacFixes
MacFixes has 47 fixes for things macOS gets wrong or leaves out. Add only the ones you want. This one is free. macOS 14 Sonoma or later.