Download BetterMouse for macOS

Remapping the scroll wheel to pan sideways? That's the kind of considered control BetterMouse puts right up front. It takes over where Logitech Options leaves off, giving you separate handles on cursor acceleration and speed for any external mouse. No driver bloat—just a tidy utility that makes a third-party mouse feel properly settled in macOS.

• Kill cursor acceleration entirely — a flat, predictable glide, with independent speed control kept separate.
• Shift-scroll for horizontal scrolling — set the direction and speed yourself; fly through timelines and wide layouts without touching a trackpad.
• Per-button mapping — turn spare mouse buttons into keyboard shortcuts or special actions, each with its own click-through setting for inactive windows.
• Right-button pan scrolling — hold the right button and drag to glide around large canvases and spreadsheets.
• Smooth scrolling engine — tune the duration, direction, and acceleration so every scroll wheel notch lands softly.

Handy extras like Ctrl-right-click and click-through for left and right clicks mean fewer trips back to the keyboard. It runs natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, with a single focus: making an external mouse behave like it actually belongs.

Threads into Spaces and Mission Control

BetterMouse doesn't try to fence off its own world—it threads into the system quietly, sitting in the menu bar and listening for the same events Mission Control and Spotlight use. That matters when you pair it with Spaces. You can map a thumb button to switch desktops left, while the native three-finger swipe still works on the trackpad. No turf war.

The click-through setting plays nicely with Stage Manager too. With it on, a right-click on a background window sends the command straight through without first bringing the window forward. Great for hitting a YouTube pause button while your code editor stays dominant.

If you use Universal Control between a Mac and an iPad, the remapped modifier keys stay local to each keyboard. Caps Lock remapped to Escape on the Mac side won't confuse the iPad side—they each follow their own rules. That kind of per-keyboard awareness means you can switch between machines without unlearning muscle memory.

For anyone searching bettermouse macos to replace bloated OEM drivers, the fit is intentionally shallow. It reads raw input, applies its curves, and hands the result to the system. No kexts, no background daemons chewing CPU. Just a lightweight preference pane that updates in real time as you drag sliders.

Side buttons from dead to assigned

You've just plugged in a generic six-button mouse after a bettermouse download. macOS recognises it, but the side buttons do nothing useful. BetterMouse opens to the Cursor tab first—drag the acceleration slider to zero, nudge speed up two notches, and already the pointer feels less floaty.

Next, the Scroll tab. You switch on Shift-scroll, leave direction natural, and set speed to 3. Inside DaVinci Resolve, holding Shift and rolling the wheel now slides the timeline sideways, smooth as a jog dial. You assign the forward side button to Mission Control and the back one to ⌘W—muscle memory forms in minutes.

A third button gets mapped to Ctrl-right-click for quick contextual menus in a browser, no keyboard hand needed. You test right-button pan scrolling on a large Figma canvas: hold the right button, drag, and the artboard glides under the cursor. No scroll bars, no zooming in and out to navigate.

By the end of the session, you've saved the profile. The mouse now behaves the same on reboot, no launch agent required. People hunting for a bettermouse free route won't find bloat here—just a focused utility that remembers every curve and mapping you set.

• Minimum macOS requirement bumped to 12.0 to meet macOS 27 requirements.
• Squashed a handful of bugs and crash triggers.

• macOS 11 or later
• Apple Silicon or Intel 64-bit Mac