How to get trackpad gestures using a third party mouse on Mac

Apple’s Magic Mouse is a great Mac peripheral, but it has a number of flaws that discourage users, especially beginners, from buying it. Therefore, many people tend to use third-party mice on their Macs. This leads to missing some great trackpad gestures available on Magic Mouse.

But there is a loophole! I recently found a workaround when setting up a Dell mouse, but now it runs all macOS gestures seamlessly. Learn how to properly set up third-party mice (Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc.) and perform their smart gestures.

How to connect a wireless mouse to your Mac

First, connect your mouse to your Mac. please do not worry. Even if your mouse package says it’s “Windows compatible,” your mouse is more likely to work on your Mac.

There are two types of wireless mice on the market. One has Bluetooth and the other has a 2.4GHz wireless USB connector.

Tweak basic Moue settings on your Mac

After connecting your mouse to your Mac, tweak the settings to your liking. After all, the mouse is the one that can navigate macOS.

1. Turn off natural scrolling

First, you need to tweak the “scroll” settings. You’ve noticed that when you connect your mouse to your Mac and move the wheel up and down, it behaves in the opposite way. This is because Macs are accustomed to using a two-finger swipe up gesture to move a website or page down.

However, when using a mouse, it is natural to move the wheel backwards.Must be disabled Natural scroll This is to prevent this from happening.

Do this:

1. Move to System Preferences..
2. select mouse Setting.
3. Uncheck Scroll direction: Natural.

2. Set the tracking, scrolling and double-click speed

On macOS, you can set different speeds to control the mouse.

• Tracking speed: This speed means the speed at which your Mac recognizes mouse movements. The faster the tracking speed, the faster the gesture.
• Scroll speed: This determines the amount of pages scrolled when you turn the wheel button. The faster the scroll speed, the faster the page scrolls. We do not recommend changing this speed.
• Double click speed: As the name implies, it determines the speed at which double clicks can be tracked. The faster the speed, the faster the Mac will determine the click gesture. At this speed, your Mac will recognize the weakest mouse clicks.

3. Turn on spring loading

If you hold a file over a folder, the folder will open, so you probably know this feature. Now, Apple disables this gesture on third-party mice by default.

To enable System Preferences → Accessibility → Pointer control → Mouse and trackpad → Turn on Spring load.. The shorter the Spring Loading delay, the faster the folder will open when you put the file in the folder.

Use a Mac trackpad gesture with a regular mouse

One of the limitations of using a third-party mouse on your Mac is to swipe up with three fingers to switch windows, or swipe up with three fingers to open Mission Control, and other Mac trackpad gestures. It cannot be used.

please do not worry! A third-party tool called xGestures allows you to use some of your Mac trackpad gestures with a regular mouse. Do the following:

1. First, download and install xGestures On Mac.

   
   xGestures is a free tool that helps you map custom gestures to your mouse.

2. Now download the three AppleScripts.
   This allows you to use the three-finger window switching gesture and the three-finger swipe up to use the mission control gesture with the mouse.
3. Save these AppleScripts in a separate folder and do not delete these AppleScripts.

   
   Note: Removing these AppleScripts disables Mac gestures with the mouse.

4. here we go, System Preferences → Open xGestures..
5. Choose whether to hold down the center button (scroll wheel) and perform the gesture, or use the left or right button to perform the gesture.
   You can also customize it to perform gestures when you hold down a command button.
6. Go to the third tab — application..
7. check mark Enable global gestures Select New gesture.

   

8. Hold down the middle button and swipe right.
   “Right” is displayed on the window screen.

   

9. Choice Gesture action So Run applescript..

   

10. choose ctrl right With the left gesture file Ctrl left For the correct gesture.
    This means that when you switch the window from left to right, you actually swipe left, “Control +” → gesture..
11. Similarly Swipe left (Ctrl right file) and Swipe up (Ctrl Up file).
12. click Apply the settings.
13. Go to option Click the tab to select Start xGestures.

    

You can now use your three-finger gesture with your mouse on your Mac. I’ve attached the above GIF to show how it works. (While performing these gestures, hold down the center button.)

Note: The service may terminate abruptly due to a background process on macOS.Just go to System Preferences → xGestures → option → Start xGestures Enable it again.

This guide hopes you can use a third-party mouse on your Mac to perform all trackpad gestures.

If you want to create your own AppleScript that mimics the Mac trackpad gesture, you can do so. Just copy the above file and change the key code and gesture action. The keycodes for your Mac keyboard can be found here.

If you have problems mapping gestures to your mouse, please let us know in the comments section below. We will be happy to help you!

You may also want to read these: