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SensibleSideButtons – side navigation for third-party mice in macOS
- saltybytes 6y agoHad 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?
- fidrelity 6y agoAs 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_ 6y agoYeah. Nowadays it feels like macOS is designed mostly for touchpads.
- m463 6y agoMaybe it is a war on the cursor.
- read_if_gay_ 6y agoiPadOS just got one though. I think they’re just pushing gestures.
- Hammershaft 6y agoMacOS 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.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- andreash 6y agoCheck out steermouse.jp. Solves the same problem. Been using it for many years. Replaced crappy Razer software on my Mac.
- nikteg 6y agoThere'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.
- appleiigs 6y agoI just noticed that Steermouse has high CPU usage 5% if you continuously move your mouse cursor. I have a brand new MacBook Pro. It's using more CPU Time than Mail, Finder, Terminal. Steermouse the easiest to use with most functionality so far compared to Sensible Side Buttons, USB Overdrive, ControllerMate. I tried out Steermouse for past couple of weeks. Just paid for it yesterday... but noticed the CPU usage today.
- donatj 6y agoThrough 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 6y agoI 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?
- rcarmo 6y agoThis is some pretty nice detective work. I need to check if my M720 does the same as the MX.
- kranner 6y agoAnother 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.
- darekkay 6y agoI'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 6y agoThis is from the same company that thinks that a one-button mouse is a really good idea.
- edejong 6y agoAt 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.
- robertoandred 6y agoIt is. It forces app developers to actually think through their UX/UI.
- ImaCake 6y agoI 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
- read_if_gay_ 6y agoThis looks like Magnet but in open source. Nice!
- Brajeshwar 6y agoSwitched to Rectangle from Spectacle[1] few weeks back after discovering it on HackerNews. Rectangle is a fork of the now unmaintained Spectacle. I was using Spectacle for as very long time. 1. https://www.spectacleapp.com https://www.spectacleapp.com
- bbx 6y agoI'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 6y agoFWIW, most (all?) of BetterSnapTool's functionality is included with BetterTouchTool. BTT is an amazing utility... worth every penny.
- xoa 6y agoI'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 6y agoI 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.
- headmelted 6y agoMy 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.
- emteycz 6y agoI run Kubuntu on my Macbook Pro 2015. It's way better than OS X and no functionality (excluding apple specific things like iCloud and Airplay) was lost, battery life is the same.
- DJBunnies 6y agoThe lack of window snapping is truly perplexing.
- leokennis 6y agoAgreed, although hovering over the green window button gives you the option to put 2 windows side by side in full screen, and option+ hovering the option to put them side by side without going full screen. Still a far cry from Win10, where it’s automatic by dragging to the side of the screen, where you have quarters, hotkeys, auto resize etc.
- limeblack 6y agoI'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-button/ https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/docs/help/how-to/mouse-b...
- Longhanks 6y agoDid you actually read the article? It is about why a simple remapping is not sufficient or at least has some caveats.
- limeblack 6y agoI’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.
- n3k5 6y agoInteresting! 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 6y agoI can recommend Steermouse[0]. It gave me control over the upper buttons on my Kensington Slimblade
- voltaireodactyl 6y ago+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 6y agoSteermouse has high CPU usage (up to 5%) when moving the mouse.
- pandatigox 6y agoHuh, 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 6y agoI recommend page up and page down. It's quicker than using the scroll wheel.
- bangonkeyboard 6y agoIronically, iPadOS now has better built-in support for multiple mouse buttons than macOS: https://aws13-customer-care-assets.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/CC%20Graphics/AssistiveTouch%20Devices/Mouse14.jpg https://aws13-customer-care-assets.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.co...
- thewebcount 6y ago> 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 6y agoThere is an option you can click so it doesn't show up in menu bar.
- floatingatoll 6y agoFor 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 6y agoI'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 6y agoI 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.
- appleiigs 6y agoI've been using USB Overdrive 10+ years (probably 15+ but I can't verify exactly).
- Hammershaft 6y agoMacOS 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 6y ago> 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.
- data_ders 6y agoi.e. that trackpad UX is great, but standard mouse UX is terrible?
- cheeze 6y agoI 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).
- torb-xyz 6y agoI 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).