Mighty Mouse confuses right and left clicks.

Sorry again for posting here, there is no folder for Apple Mouses here at discussions.

After using another mouse on my powerbook at home, my Mighty Mouse at work behaves very strange:

In the preferences are set to "Left Click: Primary Mouse Button" and "Right Click: Secondary Mouse Button". But the behaviour throughout the system is the other way round.

Plus, what makes it really annoying: If I touch the left half of the mouse slighty (without clicking!), the click is ALWAYS a secondary click, EVEN if i press the right half! It is only a primary click if I lift my fingers completely from the left half. Which is not the way I am used to work and which is pretty hard to do all day. I like to keep all my fingers rested on the mouse.

There must be something really screwed up.

I tried re-plugging the mouse and restarting the mac. Nothing changed.

What can I do? This way the mouse is more or less useless to me. Please help, Apple!

Posted on Aug 9, 2005 2:16 AM

32 replies

Sep 22, 2005 12:27 PM in response to Tilman Zitzmann

This problem has been bothering me for a few weeks but not when I first got the Mighty Mouse. When I first got it, I switched the buttons (because I use the mouse with my left hand) and it worked perfectly. A casual click anywhere on the mouse gave me a 'left' click and a deliberate, all finger removed except the one click on the other side of the mouse gave me a 'right' click. Perfect: the primary click dominates.

Then, following a lightning strike I had to send my G5 in for repair and steal my G4 back of my lad. At this point, the whole thing went a bit Pete Tong. I still had the buttons properly reversed so that I got a 'left' click when I clicked the right button and a 'right' when I clicked the left (as I wanted) but now the casual anywhere on the mouse click gave me a 'right' click and I had to be very particular to get my 'left' or primary click. Totally useless.

I dug around and found that in:

~Library/Preferences/com.apple.driver.AppleHIDMouse.plist

(You need the preference editor in the Developer suite to access it) There was a setting for ButtonDominance. Basically, this setting decides which of the buttons - left or right - get activated by a casual anywhere on the mouse click and which needs a conscious, only one finger type click.

Once more, I am as happy as Larry.

Hope this helps.

hauk

Level 1

4 points

Sep 22, 2005 12:40 PM in response to Frozo

I just bought the "mighty shaity mouse" and experience exactly the same problem. Right-clicking does work about 25% of the time. I have switched back to logitech, which at least can produce a functional mouse. Note to myself, stop forking over money to apple for things that end up in the garage. The garage is already stuffed with enough useless hardware from apple.

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Mighty Mouse confuses right and left clicks.