What do you use your extra mouse buttons for?
I have a mouse with more than the usual 3 clickables (in my case, a Roccat Kova). Originally I got it because I was looking for better gaming performance (higher DPI, polling rate, etc.), and it's symmetrically shaped (re: ambidexterity). However, for some reason (that I can't remember) I ended up mapping two of the extra buttons to Page Up and Page Down.
Now, I use these paging buttons as complements to the mouse wheel for scrolling, and I have to say that this is one of those "how did live without this before" things. I honestly feel like it's similar to the transition in technology from wheel-less mice to mice with mouse wheels. Nowadays, it's a given that mice have scroll wheels, and everyone uses them, and it's practically unthinkable to want a mouse without one. I feel the same about my mapped paging buttons. I use the wheel for short-distance scrolling, but I use the paging buttons for wide-area jumping around in a scrollable UI element (e.g. web page). This particular mouse also lets me hold down the mouse button to get repeated "keystrokes" just like a keyboard.
I was curious what things other Tilders do with their extra mouse buttons. Maybe we'd pick up useful ideas from one another.
I've had a Logitech G9X for quite awhile, it has 2 side thumb buttons which by default are mapped to forward/backward browser actions. I find this immensely useful, and there's actually a fair number of applications that will also follow the same navigation bindings.
I've also been surprised that a lot of people are unaware of what you can do with the middle mouse (or scroll wheel) button. My most common use is to close browser tabs. If you middle mouse click anywhere on a tab (not just in browsers) it will close it, instead of having to hunt for the little "X" button. Really satisfying for when you're done researching something and can close 10+ tabs.
I love middle clicking on the top bar of the browser to create new tabs, too. I even know some people who have removed the new tab button because there's no need for it once you know about the middle click thing.
I'm middle clicking in the title bar and in the empty space beside the existing tabs, and nothing is happening for me (in Chromium). What browser are you using?
I'm using Firefox. I just tested it in Chrome, and apparently it doesn't work there. I thought it was a universal thing, but apparently not.
My situation isn't quite the same, instead of a mouse, my primary method of interacting with my computer is my Steam Controller. Lots of buttons, I think the most handy in combination with the normal mouse controls is personally probably Control. Combined with scrolling, it's a quick and easy way to adjust the size of whatever I'm looking at.
Is it possible to "chord" inputs on a mouse so that pressing a button modifies what other things do? Maybe with a hotkey daemon? For me, when I hold the Steam button the left trackpad turns from a scroll wheel to a volume dial. I imagine that'd translate well if you could use a button on a mouse to do the same with a mouse's scroll wheel.
This isn't practical advice, but if you care about computer science at all, something you might be interested in learning more about is an operating system called Plan 9.
Most modern operating systems descend from a time where the mouse was not really a ubiquitous input device. One of the questions Plan 9 tries to answer is "what could computing look like if operating systems were designed with the mouse in mind in the first place?" so things like mouse chording feature pretty prominently.
Roccat mice offer this feature called "EasyShift" which is essentially a modifier key on the mouse (like Shift, Alt, Ctrl, Command keys on keyboards). I don't use it, as I find it awkward to hold one button while pressing another, but it's a thing.
Some of the gaming mice software allow this, with some manual configuration. I think all the major ones support it.
Oh man, as a fellow Steam Controller owner, chords are the 2nd best feature (after the keyboard). You can use any button as a chord, not just the main button. I would often use the grips to chord the pads into various button menus.
I'm really hoping Valve doesn't pull a Google and start de-supporting it. The third-party software I've tried isn't quite good enough.
Although it's not my main interface for the desktop, I do use my Steam Controller a good bit when playing games from the couch and needing to pop back to the desktop for some reason. Being able to alt-tab out of a game right from the controller is a fantastic feature.
In addition to having the Ctrl key available, I also use the left grip (in desktop mode) as Alt, which makes moving and resizing windows a snap (Alt-left is drag, Alt-right resizes from the nearest window corner).
I wish I had a good solution to set up chording on my main trackball (Elecom Huge), but instead I just use gnome-pie (which works fine in KDE) for pop-up radial menus instead.
Can I just say that I think this is pretty incredible? :) That's quite a display of dexterity.
My primary click mouse button has worn out so that it is occasionally double clicking. A new mouse would be > 40 USD, and a pack of new switches [from a reputable vendor] > 20 USD! Too expensive, especially considering I've never soldered anything before, and would probably botch the job. Plus the expense of getting soldering equipment, and materials. I've been looking for a Linux-compatible OS-level solution for the double clicks.
Hm. I mouse with my left hand, so I didn't notice this as being a problem.
I'm not sure I'd map Del to a mouse button, but I might try mapping Ctrl-Z, -C, -X and -V, though.
I use one of my buttons for muting my mic and headset in discord. Kind of a clutch button when gaming
I still feel the swap from 'Push to Talk' to 'Talk by Default' was a bad one.
It especially shows in video conferences. Zoom is 10x better when using PTT.
I was thinking about trying this for the middle thumb mouse button. Right now I've mapped the "-" key on my keyboard on the numpad section which is closest to my mouse location. I can usually reach the "-" key with my mouse thumb to bop my keyboard to mute/unmute Discord as needed.
My preferred mouse is the Logitech G502 Hero. Gives me two additional index finger buttons and three thumb buttons.
I've always been a fan of these combos at one point or another:
I have this mouse as well and have created three different profiles, one for gaming, one for productivity, and one for browsing. In gaming, I use one of the side buttons for push to talk and others to adjust sensitivity for different games. For productivity, I do copy/paste, page up/down, and switching windows. For browsing, tab switching and switching windows. Love this mouse!
I've mapped the mouse thumb buttons as a web browser site navigation. The front-most button for navigate-forward (which I use less-frequently) and the back-most thumb button for navigate page-back.
I've got an MX Master, which supports gestures, so really the possibilities are endless. I've settled on a few useful ones though:
Some explanations on the buttons:
I mapped the two side buttons on my mouse to Copy and Paste. I use those two functions constantly for work, usually between different windows, so it's a huge time-saver.
I have an Elecom Huge trackball that has five extra buttons aside from left, right, center click. The others are mapped to page up/down as I prefer it to scrolling in a long article, browser forward/back, and the last extra button is right next to the right click button and mapped to right click because I set it that way when I first bought the trackball and haven't unmapped it since. It was mapped that way at the start as I was hitting the extra button instead of the right click button to right click and until this post haven't thought about if I'm still doing so or using the correct button.
I've also been using an Elecom Huge, which is by far the best trackball I've been able to find since Logitech stopped selling these things, and I'm a big fan of the extra buttons.
In my case, I swapped middle-mouse off the scroll wheel and onto the farthest right button, since I find it takes less force to press (which is nice since I frequently use middle-click paste and autoscrolling in FireFox). The extra index-finger buttons Fn1 and Fn2 are mapped to two different pop-up radial menus, one for window management (toggle float/tiled, minimize, close, fullscreen), and one for media player control via DBus/MPRIS.
I've left the forward/back buttons at their defaults, even though I don't use them much, since I usually use a FireFox addon with mouse-gestures for navigation; I ought to find something more useful for those buttons.
I also keep an old Logitech MX518 around for playing Dota 2, and I've bound the forward and back side buttons to select the courier or open the shop, respectively.
I too am a refugee from the abandonment of the Cordless Optical Trackman. I picked up my last one at a garage sale the day after they discontinued them. New in box for $10. I've tried all of the finger balls that Elecom has released so far. Their initial wireless offering is sitting at my rarely used desk at work (I've been WFH for years, but go in about once a month prior to COVID), I have a wireless Huge for the WFH side of my desk, a wired Huge for my personal computer, and a Deft Pro in the closet for the wall mounted PC that controls the 3D printer and streaming.
I rarely use the middle click as I have the Snap Links extension where I can draw a box to select the link I want to open in a new tab, just haven't found a use for the middle button yet and it's still used if I happen to be on the link I want to open as I'm scrolling.
This is a well timed thread because I just ordered a new ergo mouse and triple foot switch. Up to this point, I've used a single foot switch for toggling the number pad within the right-hand side of my keyboard (which may change - TBD), then I've got functions like back/undo and page up/down on the extra mouse buttons. I have carpal tunnel and other RSI problems, so I'm trying to minimize the amount of mouse movement and switching between keyboard and mouse.
Can you make general recommendations about vendors or specific products to look into for foot switches? That seems like a neat idea that I hadn't considered before.
All of my ergo peripherals have come from Kinesis. I have the Advantage Pro keyboard, Evoluent VerticalMouse, and their single foot switch. I just purchased the Kinesis Savant Elite2 triple foot switch and the DXT Mouse. I can't really make recommendations beyond this brand. I've been happy with their products and only bought more from them rather than branching out into other brands.
I love the Kinesis keyboard. I found the vertical mice helped for a very short while. Maybe foot pedals would have done it for me, I never tried them. Only the rollermouse or the Apple Trackpad really helped, as they train you to keep your hands off the devices which keeps muscles unengaged which is the fundamental cause of RSI.
Well I'm open to any and all suggestions. I've never heard about the RollerMouse but am reading about it now. I might have to give this a go. Switching back and forth from keyboard to mouse is my problem, as much as I love the ergo devices I have.
Do you have both an Advantage and the RollerMouse? I'm not sure I have enough space on my keyboard tray for both.
No, I have the Kinesis freestyle, which I would tent up with optional stands. It is the tenting which is most important for me, as holding my hands horizontally is what causes prolonged muscle tension in my forearms.
I then put the rollermouse in front of the tented keyboard. It was a bit of a tight fit, but it worked. Now a days I have a macbook with the Kinesis Freestyle, and I found the Rollermouse didn't function well with the Mac, so i switched to the Apple magic trackpad.
I have the Freestyle 2 with stands as well. I bought it as a more portable ergo option for the handful of times I have to travel for work each year. It sits unused for now since all work travel is canceled indefinitely though.
Have you heard of the KeyMouse Alpha?
My eyes are bleeding from the cost.
I went with whatever was popular with my co-workers, but I am not sure if my company would have shelled out for a $600 franken-mouse :)
Yea the cost is eye watering, but you can't forget that you're receiving a mouse and keyboard for the cost, not just a mouse. I was able to get my Advantage, VerticalMouse, and a new chair covered by work. Might take a little finagling for a $600 keyboard/mouse combo during the pandemic when extra spending is being closely monitored. Thankfully, I have ADA documentation and physician forms on file with HR, so they are much more likely to accommodate me than say no.
I have the veeery old IntelliMouse Optical with one button for my thumb and one for my ring finger (in addition to the buttons for my pointer and middle fingers). The thumb button minimizes the active window, while the ring finger button switches between active windows.
That was my favorite mouse for many years...I wonder why that design hasn't been replicated.
Having that ring-finger button was incredible design, especially since the shape was hand-neutral.
Crushing my enemies
I have a G502 Lightspeed. I use the two buttons just left of the left click to adjust mouse sensitivity on the fly.
I use the two more prominent buttons placed under the thumb for "aggressive" actions in video games (usually things like melee or grenades), and other actions in less violent games. I do not use them outside of video games.
I have the third thumb button (with the crosshair on it) bound to scroll lock, which I use for push-to-talk VOIP apps like mumble, discord, and various games.
Wow, this is 100% the same way I use my side mouse buttons, down to the same mouse as well (though I have the OG G502 model).
I use a Razer Viper. I've always had a good experience with their mice and products (keyboard is going on 9 years with no issues). Anyway, it's an ambidextrous mouse with 2 side buttons on either side. I mainly use them for forward and backward, but also as a push to talk button for VOIP programs, like teamspeak and discord. After using a binding for PTT on a mouse I will never go back to anything else. It's vastly superior IMO.
I have a Logitech G900. I use my extra buttons for easier web/IDE navigation.
I'm on my second Logitech G502. It's got the standard 3 buttons (L, R, Wheel) plus three thumb buttons and two additional buttons left of LMB. Two of the thumb buttons are my browser forward and back, don't use the third because it's a bit of a reach, and the two extra LMBs are copy and paste. I love this setup.
There's one more button to switch built-in profiles, but I never use the other profiles. One of them turns the extra LMBs into a DPI +/-, no idea what the other profile does. I just know that when my copy/paste buttons aren't working, I've accidentally switched profiles and need to flip it back.
I use them in War Thunder for firing the secondary and tertiary weapons on vehicles. These tend to be things like the sponson-mounted 75mm cannon on the M3 Grant and Lee, and the RB 52 ATGMs (Anti-Tank Guided Missiles) on the Stridsvagn 81. With the addition of the radial menu for weapon selection, however, this is less necessary, so I only occasionally use them now for going forward or back a page in web browsers.
I actually found myself with a slightly interesting use case. While I would normally use them for push-to-talk in Discord plus various things in games, I can't, as my drivers refuse to let them be their 'own keys', so-to-speak. Either they can control something about the drivers directly (e.g. DPI) or they can be shortcuts for other keyboard or mouse keys.
However, my mouse also has an issue with its scroll wheel, in that after owning it for a while the middle click begins to stop working. Instead of going through figuring out how to fix it myself (complicated) or buying a new mouse, I ended up coming up with a fun workaround. Since I don't use the extra keys due to the aforementioned driver issues, I rebound the keys so that the 5th button takes the place of middle-click. Took a little bit to get used to, but it works like a charm!
Mine has a DPI button near the scroll wheel and two lateral buttons to click with the thumb. I just disabled it because I rarely use the mouse, but I'm thinking now to map to something.
Page Up and Down for me is the spacebar (shift + spacebar for page up).
Just did it.
Just the thumb buttons: previous or next song
With ctrl pressed: play/pause and stop
With shift pressed: volume up and down
I have a G600, which has a total of 14 extra buttons. I have left and right on the scroll wheel mapped to back and forward, and the buttons on the side mapped to numpad functions.
Is there a way to map a button on my mouse to a unique new "key", that won't be interpreted by any program as an existing key? I have a logitech mouse with 7 buttons on it (normal 2, middle click, then four side buttons), but the logitech software only allows the buttons to be mapped to mouse 1-5 or standard pre-existing keyboard keys. That almost works okay for the first five keys, but I want to do things like make it so the extra buttons toggle mute/push-to-talk/deafen in Discord, and nothing else. I don't want it to trigger forward/back if I happen to press it while open in a browser or windows explorer. I don't want to bind the button to a numpad key because I don't want it doing whatever that key does in whatever program I happen to be using. I don't want it to do some standard key combo because I want to be able to hit it while I'm actively pressing other regular keyboard buttons in a game and I don't want it triggering those. I don't want to reconfigure every program I use to ignore mouse 4 and up, because I use a lot of programs while in voice calls and not all of them are that configurable.
I found a total hack to make that work for the mouse 4 and 5 buttons specifically: I set the logitech software to make the 4th and 5th buttons do forward and back (which seem to be the standard mouse 4 and 5 binds), and then use X-Mouse to intercept mouse 4 and 5 and reinterpret them as the "F13" and "F14" keys, which absolutely no software reacts to by default because most keyboards don't have them. Then I can set Discord to react to those keys.
But I can't do that with the 6th and 7th buttons on my mouse because the logitech software doesn't let me set them to be "mouse 6" and "mouse 7" binds, and it doesn't let me directly bind them to F15/F16 because it doesn't happen to have those in its key list. I have to have the keys bound to mouse keys in the logitech software before they can be read by X-Mouse, and the logitech software only offers mouse 1-5 binds. I guess I could try to figure out a normal F-number key or a weird key like the sysrq key that would be safeish in most programs to copy, and just have the logitech software bind a button directly to that, but I'm really baffled that I can't figure out the clean solution to this. Maybe there's an alternative to the logitech software that would just let me pick a higher-numbered F-number key directly.
Surely I'm not the only one with this kind of issue? It seems like making each button on the mouse do something separate than any other existing buttons is exactly what anyone would want to do with a device like this, but it weirdly doesn't seem to be part of the happy path of any of the software. Is this actually an unrealistic goal? What do people who buy extra keyboard inputs (like this "streamer deck") do to make those buttons do unique things that don't conflict with other keys? (People wouldn't buy these extra inputs if it's just colliding with keys they already have, right?)
I've got the Logitech M570 which has a forward and back button that is supposed to be used in the browser. I've remapped the to switch between virtual desktops in windows.
This is immensely useful. I keep chat and email on one desktop, spottily on another, and my code editor and browser on my main virtual desktop. If I get a message, I can easily swap over to another desktop and reply without having to minimize any windows. Honestly it helps me maintain my flow.
I map my numpad to desktops, so I get what you mean. One-touch desktop switching is something I could not live without any more, and when I go to other people's computers, Alt- or Command-tabbing around feels like such a slog.
Three side buttons, of which the topmost two are Mute and Play/Pause for audio. The third is rarely used in games for quick actions.
Then on top there are two buttons that are meant to be used to change the DPI; l've set those to launch MSPaint and Calculator since l use both often & it's nice to always have those within reach.
l use MSPaint together with alt+printscreen to make screenshots; l'm aware snip tool is a thing but l prefer pasting to MSPaint so l can edit things right away.