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5th Mouse Button and Expose and Spaces

I've just installed the 10.6 upgrade and everything is wonderful except one thing, my 5th mouse button is assignable, but not recognized for spaces/expose. I can use my 5th mouse button in the finder and it acts as a left-click, so I know the OS is recognizing the input itself. But, when I assign the 5th mouse button to any of the expose or spaces it fails to activate said action. I prefer to use my 5th mouse button to activate spaces, I've assigned it that, clicked it, but nothing. Anybody else having trouble with this?

BTW, I am using a Microsoft Trackball Explorer.

MacBook Pro late 2008, Mac OS X (10.6), Microsoft Trackball Explorer

Posted on Aug 28, 2009 2:38 PM

107 replies

Mar 20, 2014 12:24 PM in response to Thomas Maccarthy

Same here, I just made a clean install on the new Mac Pro.. at first all 5 mouse buttons worked, I usually have the 4th assigned to "show desktop". Then suddenly it stopped working and I can't assign any mouse button to "show desktop". None of them are recognized.

Can't believe that this is such an old bug. Seems like I'll have to live with it :/

Feb 20, 2015 3:10 PM in response to Jon Daley

For Logitech mice, the solution seems to be using the Logitech Control Center. It's available for download here:

http://support.logitech.com/software/logitech-control-center-for-macintosh-os-x

I wanted to set one of my non-functioning buttons to "Show Desktop". In the LCC, I set that button to "Mission Control". From there you have the additional option to specify show desktop, show dashboard, launchpad, etc.

5th Mouse Button and Expose and Spaces