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Is there a way to make Logitech side mouse buttons just be generic mouse buttons? If there is a way to do this, I can't find it in the "Logi Options" app, which is the program that Logitech provides for configuring Logitech mouse buttons.

Yes, I can set a side mouse button to be a left-click or a right-click. But what about setting it to be mouse button 4, 5, or 6?

There are many programs that will let me bind functionality to mouse buttons 4, 5, and 6, etc. But my Logitech mice do not seem willing to expose their extra buttons as just generic mouse buttons. It's very frustrating!

If there's no way to make this work for a Logitech mouse, does anyone have any recommendations for a good ergonomic mouse that has some side buttons and merely exposes these as simple generic mouse buttons that apps can identify as such?

P.S. I'm using Catalina at the moment.

Douglas
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2 Answers2

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It turns out that if you uninstall or disable Logi Options in the System Preferences, then at least two of the side buttons on Logitech mice seem to appear as standard mouse events. I.e., Mouse Button 4 and Mouse Button 5.

Having Logi Options configured to do Input Monitoring in System Preferences, which is required for Logi Options to work, blocks apps from seeing Mouse Button 4 and Mouse Button 5 events. And Logi Options itself has no option to just let these events pass through Logi Options unmolested.

Douglas
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If you are not finding what you are looking for in the software provided by Logitech for their USB Mac mice there are indeed other ways to do what you want to do.

Though I have not used either one of these products, they have been around for quite a while and seem to be well supported by their developers.

I was reminded of these recently on https://MacInTouch.com featuring info about recent updates to a couple of programs that let you customize USB devices that otherwise don't offer Mac software, or their Mac software is not that great.

The first is Steer Mouse and the second is USB Overdrive. Either of these should provide at least some, if not all, of the functionality you desire.

Steve Chambers
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  • Thanks! Steer Mouse works great. I first had to turn off Logi Options in Security & Privacy => Input Monitoring, or Logi Options would block Steer Mouse's ability to see mouse events. If all I needed was for programs to see mouse buttons 4 & 5, maybe I didn't need Steer Mouse. I could have just turned of Logi Options. But I really wanted to bind side button clicks to keystrokes, and Steer Mouse lets me do this. Logi Options is supposed to let me do this. And Logi Options will still perform the keystrokes that I set up ages ago, but now it won't let me change them or make new ones. – Douglas Apr 09 '21 at 22:27