A shot of the Logitech G703, my current and now slightly malfunctioning mouse.
It seems that the switches on my trusty Logitech G703 mouse are finally starting to go, particularly those under the left button, as it is starting to register double-clicks, no clicks or some random combination of the two.
I can’t remember when I got the mouse, so I suppose I’m not too upset, but, unlike days of yore, I’m not looking forward to looking for and getting a new mouse, I’d rather one that worked just magically appeared on my desk.
Sine that seems unlikely to happen, what I may do instead is switch to one of my backup mice (yes, I have multiples) and use one of those in the interim and begin a search for a new mouse. I could also swap out the G703 with the G403 currently on the Mac (they are the same mouse, the G403 is the wired version). That would likely mean using a wireless mouse on my Mac, which would be bad because they kind of suck (unless you use Apple’s mouse).
I checked Logitech Canada’s site and the G703 is still available…for $129.99. I must have bought mine on sale or in an alternate dimension because I know I didn’t pay anywhere near that for it (nor would I ever pay that much for a mouse).
I don’t actually have a Magic Mouse 2, I just love pictures of them being charged. Image is courtesy of geek.com.
A small but persistent annoyance in writing on my Mac mini is the way the mouse cursor behaves. Or in this case, misbehaves.
I noticed it when I connected my Logitech Marathon 705 via USB wireless receiver. Mouse movement would seem okay, but on closer inspection there is always some glitches in the form of the cursor jumping ahead or stuttering. I installed the Logitech drivers and found no change.
I then switched to a Logitech M720, which connects via the same receiver. The erratic mouse movement was even worse. I tried using both mice directly on my desktop, no mousepad. No improvement. I tried various things like software updates, restarting in safe mode and so on and again, no change. Jiggly mouse syndrome persisted. I did not want jiggly mice.
Searching for troubleshooting tips largely produced results that were obvious and unhelpful (“check to see if there is gunk in your mouse”) or obscure enough to make me wonder if Macs are just really bad with third party mice.
Since both tested mice are wireless and using the same receiver, I decided to try a different approach. I unplugged the receiver and plugged in my old wired Steelseries Rival 300 mouse. When I used this mouse with Windows, I quite liked it and only replaced it when I went wireless (with the Logitech G700, which I adore, save for somewhat short battery life). After plugging in the Rival 300 I waited a few moments, then moved the mouse. It moved exactly as intended. No jumps, no jiggles, no erratic behavior. It was super slow, as is always the case with the default mouse settings on a Mac (why this is so is a question left for the ages). I bumped up the tracking speed and voila, it is working just fine.
So now I wonder, is it the wireless receiver? Is it a Logitech thing? Would this happen with a Bluetooth mouse? I am okay with using the Rival 300 as a stopgap but given the Mac mini and PC share the same desk, I really prefer wireless for both. I’ll probably try digging out my old Microsoft Bluetooth mouse and see how it fares, as soon as I remember where it is. In the meantime, I accept a tail on a mouse to end the mouse mayhem on my Mac.
Also, to paraphrase Phil Schiller, as others have done a billion times or so already, “It just works, my butt.”
To be fair, this is more about fighting Logitech’s software, so the Mac is kind of off the hook for this one.
Even though I got the G703 mouse working in Part 1 I ended up moving it back permanently to the PC, mainly due to the hassle of plugging and unplugging the USB charging cable.
Instead, I switched over to a spare Logitech Marathon M705 mouse that I bought on sale “just in case.” And just in case has arrived!
It’s a nice mouse, has side buttons, works wirelessly, and has incredibly long battery life. Best of all, the Unifying receiver that plugs into any standard USB port is tiny. I plugged in said receiver and the mouse began working immediately…but with only the left, right and middle mouse buttons working (see Part 1 for more gruesome details on this).
However, the Logitech Unifying Software (LUS) would allow me to program all the buttons. All I had to do was flip the power button on the bottom of the mouse, flip it back on and wait for the LUS to detect it. Once detected, smiles all around.
Except this happened:
Undaunted, I turned to the tips hidden behind the Troubleshooting information button. This lead me to discover I had another unifying receiver and a not-unifying-but-still-Logitech receiver plugged into my PC. I removed those (the devices they were used for are long gone), but this made no difference. Another tip said to shut down any device that might be synced up to a receiver and I do have a Surface Pro 3 (in the bedroom) and a ThinkPad (to my immediate left). I may have used this mouse with one of them, but the knowledge is lost to the sand of time. Or the sands in my brain. The ThinkPad is currently installing a Windows update because that’s what Windows computers do, but when it’s done, I’ll shut it down. The SP3 is probably on the edge of where a receiver would reach, but I’ll also shut it down and see what happens. But not right now, because it’s getting late and my wrangling-with-technology timer just went DING.
I am not giving up hope, but am leaning toward needing a third party tool or divine intervention to get those precious mouse side buttons working.
I’ve had a few days to acclimate to working with a Mac for an extended period of time. I normally use my MacBook Pro for an hour or so at most and haven’t spent a lot of time tweaking with its settings like I would a desktop computer. Now that I have a Mac mini, which indeed sits on my desktop, I’ve been diving into settings to make it work the way I want it to. The experience has been…interesting.
Today I am going to talk about one thing: mouse support.
Mouse support in macOS is bad. It’s like a lot of Apple’s mice in that regard. Bad hardware, meet bad software!
Here are some of the bad things:
No “snap to default button in dialogs” like in Windows
No automatic support for third or fourth mouse buttons
Even with some settings maxed out, the mouse still feels a bit sluggish compared to how it operates in Windows
While the first and third items on the list are either subjective or more “nice to have” features, supporting the side buttons on a mouse is pretty fundamental. It’s not 1985 anymore. Mice have more than one button.
I was not actually aware of this because most of my Mac experience has been using a keyboard or a trackpad. When I plugged in my wireless Logitech G703 mouse, it was instantly recognized and worked without any fuss. Yay. But then I discovered the two side buttons would not work. Or rather, they worked in weird ways. In Firefox, pressing Button 3 (the one normally assigned as Back) would result in the same action as pressing the middle mouse button, which is to produce a weird little circular symbol on screen that lets you scroll up and down by moving the mouse. It’s a feature that I’m pretty sure no one ever has ever used on purpose after scroll wheels became a thing.
A mini mouse crisis was now underway.
The Logitech Gaming Software (LGS) showed the buttons correctly mapped as Forward and Back, but the Mac remained unconvinced. I began to investigate using my well-honed Google skills. This led me to try third party tools like BetterTouchTool, which did indeed allow me to map the buttons the way I wanted–nay, the way nature intended! But I didn’t really want to use a separate program just to get the buttons to function the way they would in any sensible operating system. I poked around some more and found that Command-[ is a near-universal key command for Back.
I went into the LGS and assigned Button 3 to Command-[. After doing this the LGS software now showed the button labelled with the keyboard shortcut as seen below.
And at least for now, using the Back button on the mouse does just that–it goes back. It’s even working in Finder, which kind of surprises me.
Searching, testing and playing around with settings for this consumed a decent chunk of the evening. For something that works without any configuration needed at all in Windows. I’m not saying Windows is better. But in this case, Windows is way better.
Perhaps mouse support will be improved in macOS XI.
As is her way the cat told me it was feeding time by meowing until I couldn’t ignore her any longer (not that I do, mind you, I’m just saying there is a certain persistent tone in her vocalizations that clearly states ignoring is not a viable option) and so I dutifully went into the kitchen with her following behind. Out of the corner of my eye I think I see something small and dark move toward the back end of the kitchen nook where the litter box is located. Typically when I see such movement it’s a creepy big ol’ spider but this time seemed different.
I got a flashlight and shone it into the nook since it’s not well-lit and the little shape flitted from behind the litterbox to the bucket. I walked over and saw that it was a very small mouse. I then stood back, unsure what to do. As I continued to shine the light, the cat finally turned around and looked in the direction of the mouse. At this point the two were less than ten feet apart. The cat then turned away as if nothing was there. So much for the killer instinct.
I had nothing handy to try to catch the mouse with and it was so small it looked like it could squeeze through almost anywhere. I finally got a can of air to try to direct it out of hiding behind the appliances and it scurried off into the central basement room. At that point I closed the door and put a towel at the base to seal it off. Traps can be set in that room without any pets springing them so that will probably be the plan of action.
