Customizing Your Mouse Settings

f you use an Apple Magic Mouse with your Mac you should check out all of the customization settings. Even if you don't change anything, there are probably gestures you aren't aware of that you could be using.



Check out Customizing Your Mouse Settings at YouTube for closed captioning and more options.
Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's look at customizing the settings for your Apple Magic Mouse.
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So the Apple Magic Mouse is the one that you would get with your Mac if you chose a mouse over a trackpad. Of course if you have a MacBook then of course you probably just have the trackpad built into the MacBook. But if you got an iMac, MacMini or a MacStudio then you may have opted for a Magic Mouse.
Now Apple sells many different colored versions of the Magic Mouse. But individually at the website you can buy the white or the black version. But what they all have is a touch surface on the mouse. So it's not just a simple mouse where you could point and then click either the left or right side. You can actually do things without clicking using one or two fingers on the surface of the Magic Mouse. So to configure your Magic Mouse you would go to System Settings in macOS Ventura or System Preferences before that. Then look for the mouse settings. You'll see far fewer options than you will with the trackpad. But there are enough to spread over two different screens. At the top here you'll see examples of whatever it is you are hovering the pointer over.
So, for instance, if you hover over Tracking Speed you'll see a demonstration of Tracking Speed. Here you can use the slider and set a tracking speed to slow and notice how when I move my mouse, like this, how far it goes. But if I go to fast moving the same amount covers quite a distance and it accelerates. So if I move Slowly it doesn't go that far. But if I move quickly it goes further even though I moved the same distance on my desk. That way you can select something with precision but also quickly get to the other side of the screen.
The next setting is for Natural Scrolling. So you actually use one finger on the surface of the trackpad to scroll. For instance, here on this webpage all I need to do is touch with one finger and drag up or down. Now I have it set to Natural Scrolling so when I move up the contents of the webpage move up. When I move down the contents of the webpage move down. This is built to be the same if you're using a Touch Screen, say, on your iPhone or iPad. It works in the same manner. But if you turn Off Natural Scrolling then it works in the opposite way. This is the way mice scroll wheels and trackpads originally worked years ago on the Mac and still do, for the most part, on Windows. So now I go in the opposite direction to scroll. You also can scroll left and right using just a back and forth motion like that.
Next, we have a Secondary Click. Usually known as the right click. If you do select click right side then it is indeed a right click. So here in the Finder, for instance, I can click on the left side to select something. But if I click on the right side then it brings up the Context Menu or does whatever that app does with a right click or a secondary click. You can change this to turn it Off completely. Turning it off still gives you access to the Context Menu but you need to hold down the Control Key on the keyboard and then click. The advantage is that you can also click on the right side and it acts just like a regular left click. So if you find yourself accidentally triggering the Context Menu all the time then you may want to turn this Off and rely on holding the Control Key down to bring up the Context Menu. If you like you can switch to the left side and make a regular click be the right side of the mouse and the Context Menu will come up when you click the left side.
Now there is also the option of Smart Zoom when you double-tap with one finger. So if you turn that On and then go, say, to this webpage here, if I double-tap, and I'm not going to press hard enough to actually click just a quick little tap, you can see it zooms in.
Now under More Gestures you have several options here. You can swipe between pages and you could do that with scrolling left or right with one finger, swipe left or right with two fingers, and swipe with one or two fingers. So let's set it to Swipe Left or Right with Two Fingers. Now say I'm here in Safari and I click on a link and I want to go back. I would then just use two fingers like that and it jumps back. Two fingers the other way goes forward.
Now you can also swipe between full screen applications. Actually what this really means is Mission Control Desktops. So this is Swipe Left or Right with Two Fingers. So you definitely don't want to have it conflict with this. You can see if I turn that On an turn this On it automatically turns Swipe Between Pages Off. So let's setup Mission Control with multiple desktops here and even go into Safari here and set this up with a Full screen desktop. So now I have three different spaces here. Desktop 1, Safari, and Desktop 2. Now if I were to swipe using two fingers I can go to the next space and then the next space and then back. Now you could also just bring up Mission Control with a double-tap with two fingers if this switch is On. So like this and it brings up Mission Control here and I can switch to one of these.
Now there are actually more settings for the mouse but you won't find them here. Instead, go to Accessibility. Then go down to Motor and under that Pointer Control. Then you've got some mouse and trackpad settings. You've got your double-click speed here. So if you find you're double clicking a little too easily you can adjust this. Also if you click on Mouse Options then you can turn off Use Mouse for Scrolling completely. You can also turn off use inertia when scrolling. That's that acceleration. You can adjust the scroll speed if you like.
Now if you have a third party mouse things are going to work completely differently. Chances are you need to add some software that's then going to add something in System Settings where you can control the specific hardware of that mouse. It's going to work completely differently than Apple's Magic Mouse.
I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.Related Subjects: System Preferences (142 videos)
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Customizing Your Trackpad Settings ― Customizing the Mac Context Menu ― Creating Direct Links To Your iPhone Settings ― Exploring Your Mac's Wi-Fi Settings