How to Remap Your Extra Mouse Buttons for Optimal Productivity

How to Remap Your Extra Mouse Buttons for Optimal Productivity "Modern mice come with at least one or two extra buttons accessible with your thumb, and many also hide two more on their sides of the scroll wheel. What if we told you that you're doing a disservice to yourself if you use such a multi-button mouse with its default key setup? So, allow us to offer an alternative that we promise can radically change how you use your computer and dramatically boost your productivity. And no, we're not overstating things. Your Mouse's Defaults Could Do Better The default assignments for the extra buttons in mice are a relic from back when Internet Explorer reigned supreme. However, nowadays, we're navigating the web differently. Instead of continuously going Back and Forward, we open and discard tabs. So, what's the point of keeping the thumb buttons of our mice mapped to an Internet Explorer functionality relic? Similarly, many mice allow you to tilt the wheel to scroll left and right. Theoretically, this makes sense: it's named ""scroll wheel"" for a reason. And yet, how many times do you scroll horizontally every day? If you're not spending most of your time in Excel, the answer's probably ""never"". Why not map those buttons to something actually useful? How to Enhance Your Mouse for the Modern Day You might not use Back and Forward navigation or Left and Right scrolling a lot. Still, there's no arguing: easy access to those features is admittedly helpful. Why map those keys to something else? The answer's simple: because you'll use this ""something else"" all day, every day. As you'll see, our mappings aren't random, nor based on how we use our PCs. Quite the opposite, they're even more useful than the defaults for the vast majority of users. In this guide, you'll be able to complete software installations, accept and cancel almost all prompts, and even do some basic text editing without lifting a finger! What Mouse Should You Use? For this guide, we'll use Logitech's G502 Hero mouse. Based on its popularity, we can safely guess that many of you might also be using it. You can follow along with a different mouse, as long as it's also programmable. You'll only need its official software or a third-party tool that allows button remapping. Although our G502 Hero comes with 11 programmable buttons, you don't need as many for what we'll see here. Our most essential tweaks only need the two thumb and two wheel buttons. Upgrade Your Clicking If you are using your mouse with no extra software, now is the time to install its official software or a third-party solution that allows its customization. Since we'll be using Logitech's G502 Hero mouse, we'll also use the official software that came with it, which we already had installed. However, since this isn't a mouse-specific guide, we won't cover locating and installing the software for any particular mouse. Reprogramming Thumb Buttons Fire up your mouse configuration software, and pay a visit to the page or menu from where you can re-configure its thumb-accessible buttons. In Logitech's software that we're using, we first had to click on the G502 Hero mouse. Then, choose the second entry from the icon menu on the left of the window to get to the Assignments screen. We also clicked on the left/right buttons on the sides of the mouse preview that dominates the window to ""rotate"" the mouse to its side, enabling us to remap its side buttons. Select the first thumb button and map it to a simple Enter keypress. Repeat for the second thumb button, but map it to Escape. If, like our G502 Hero, you also have access to a third thumb-accessible button, map it to your mouse's ""shift"" functionality. This feature swaps the primary functions assigned to the mouse buttons for a second set when you press that button. That was the first piece of magic. Let's move to the wheel. Creating a Better Mouse Wheel Move to your mouse's wheel configuration page or menu. Remap the wheel's left tilt/click to the Backspace key of your keyboard. Then, remap its right tilt/click to Delete. Remember to check our guide on how to fix a mouse that double-clicks on single-clicks. It's primarily about the main left button, but some of our suggestions apply to all buttons on your mouse. After mapping Delete to one of them, you wouldn't want it clicking ""on its own"". Does your mouse support a shift function that allows mapping more functions to its buttons, like our G502 Hero? Let's see a great way to use it. In the case of the G502 Hero, those extra function slots are available if you flick the Default/G-Shift switch under the mouse preview. However, we won't map single keypresses to them. Instead, we'll go for macros. Creating a Wheel Shift & Macros To assign macros to your mouse's buttons, you first have to create them. In the case of the Logitech G502 Hero that we're using here, that's done by choosing MACROS under Assignments on the left of the mouse configuration window. Create a new macro and name it ""Minimize Window"", for that's precisely what it will do. Set the macro to run only once when you press the mouse button where it's assigned. For us, that meant choosing the NO REPEAT option. Choose that you want to manually enter a series of key presses on your keyboard (we chose the RECORD KEYSTROKES option). Keep the Left Windows key held and press the cursor down key twice. For us, the macro showed Left Windows + Down + Down. Save your newly created macro, and then repeat the process to record a second one. This time give it a name like ""Reopen Closed Tab"" or ""Undo Close Tab"", and press the CTRL+Shift+T key combination on your keyboard. Return to the main mouse-button-remapping screen or menu. Then, map those two macros to the ""shifted"" left and right wheel tilt/clicks, respectively. While there, also map Page Up and Page Down key presses to the ""shifted"" state of your wheel scroll up/down. Page Up for Shift + Wheel Up, Page Down for Shift + Wheel Down. It's also worth checking our guide about the 6 best apps to automate your keyboard and mouse, to further extend your mouse's functionality. And with those final tweaks, we're done. But, how and why is our setup supposed to be ""better"" than the defaults? Absolute Control at Your Fingertips Mapping Enter and Escape to your mouse buttons might seem useless at first. That's until you realize that, in both Windows and Linux, those keys also control most requesters that appear! Enter is the equivalent of a click on a preselected ""OK"" button, while Escape is the same as clicking on cancel. In other words, from now on, you'll be able to accept or reject any requester that pops up by simply rocking your thumb back or forth! The Backspace and Delete mappings on your wheel allow you to correct what you typed by deleting letters to the left or right of the cursor. Backspace is also the equivalent of ""go back"" in many applications, from your web browser to KODI media center. Just remember not to tilt your wheel to the right (where you mapped Delete) in your favorite file manager. Except if deleting what you selected was what you wanted. We probably don't have to explain what our aptly named Reopen Closed Tab and Minimize Window macros do. Keep the mouse shift-state button held, and flick your mouse wheel to the left or right. You'll instantly either have the tab you accidentally closed in your browser reappear, or send its window - or any window - to hide in the taskbar. Finally, the Page Up and Page Down mappings are just icing on the cake for even faster scrolling up-down. Those weren't available on our Logitech G502 Hero mouse, but we've included them since you can use them with other mice. Try your mouse with those tweaks for at least a day, and we promise you'll stick with them forever! What's even better is that since most modern mice can also store those settings in their on-board memory, you can use them across multiple computers. Share Share Tweet Email The 5 Best Apps for Sharing a Mouse and a Keyboard Across Multiple Computers Do you want to increase your productivity by using two computers? Here are five programs you can use to control multiple computers from one device. Read Next Related Topics Windows Windows Computer Mouse Tips About The Author Odysseas Kourafalos (11 Articles Published) OK's real life started at around 10, when he got his first computer - a Commodore 128. Since then, he's been melting keycaps by typing 24/7, trying to spread The Word Of Tech to anyone interested enough to listen. Or, rather, read. More From Odysseas Kourafalos Subscribe to our newsletter Join our newsletter for tech tips, reviews, free ebooks, and exclusive deals! 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