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I bought a new trackball mouse, but it only has a left and right button, no middle click.

I use middle click almost exclusive to close tabs in Firefox and Visual Studio, close windows, open links in a new tab, etc, so new mouse is a huge decrease in usability from prior mouse.

How do I simulate middle-click functionality on a two-button mouse?

I'm using the following:

I've tried the following:

  • Opened Control Panel > Devices > Mouse, but there are no settings for middle click. Button configuration has no visible options to simulate middle-click.
  • Opened device hardware properties, no configuration for middle click either.

3 Answers 3

1

It has been a long time since I used a two button mouse but I think it was click both buttons at once.

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  • I know this works on most tablet PCs, but it doesn't look like clicking both buttons has any special meaning on my desktop machine.
    – Juliet
    Jun 20, 2011 at 0:02
  • I see some more information added to your post, on a track ball type mouse with two button you have to configure it to a key like alt with the button of choose or on some you can have ether button act as the middle button with the key pressed. You will need the Kensington software to make this work I believe I hope this helps.
    – N4TKD
    Jun 20, 2011 at 0:22
0

If you don't find a "native"/settings-based solution, you may wish to try Autohotkey

1
  • You can set it up so that it sends a middle-click when you press some other combination, e.g. Ctrl+Shift+Click, or both mouse buttons together. Aug 13, 2018 at 15:07
0

I put together this AutoHotKey (version 2+) script to make it easier to do "middle-click & drag".

The "left" and "right" mouse clicks still both get sent to the application like normal -- this script only "injects" some extra "middle mouse button" events. Basically, once both left + right mouse buttons are down, a "middle mouse down" is triggered (and raises a flag). Later, if the "flag" is up and the user lets go of either left or right mouse buttons, then a "middle mouse up" is triggered (and the flag is lowered).

#Requires AutoHotkey v2.0

_mockDown := 0
while(1){
    _bothDown := GetKeyState("LButton", "P") + GetKeyState("RButton", "P")
    if(_bothDown == 2 && _mockDown == 0){
        Send "{Blind}{MButton down}"
        _mockDown := 1
    }
    if(_bothDown != 2 && _mockDown == 1)
    {
        Send "{Blind}{MButton up}"
        _mockDown := 0
    }
    Sleep 25
}

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