One of the tools I’ve become a fan of on my personal MacBook is BetterMouse. It’s a utility that lets you configure your mouse. It gives fine control of speed and acceleration, and lets you define any auxiliary buttons you have on your mouse. It’s similar to Logitech’s Logi Options, but with more options, as well as not tied to one vendor.

It’s noted in my Uses This, and got a mention in a Recent Post.

It has a few features that go beyond mice. For one, it allows keyboard bindings. I could map “sleep” or “volume up” to an alternate key, if the keyboard doesn’t have it natively. It’s not something I use (I tend not to use “media keys”), but I do like that, if I needed it, it’s in something I already have. I prefer not to have too many dedicated resident things.

I just updated to the latest version. I saw an interesting item in the release notes:

An onscreen notification for mic mute action.

I hadn’t noticed this before, and started playing with it. Basically, if you assign it to a mouse button, it acts as a global toggle for muting the microphone. I can have whatever application that is using the microphone, like, say, Teams, not in focus while I’m doing something else, like editing a spreadsheet. If I need to talk, I can hit a button on the mouse I assign to it, and it will unmute. Hit it again, and it mutes. I tested it on a couple applications, and it works the way I expect.

I had this working on my WorkTop in the past, even getting a mouse that had an extra button as my take-to-the-office mouse. This was done through PowerToys, but has since become part of Windows 11, using the Win+Alt+K keystroke.

Unfortunately, this is not part of the standard MacOS, which would be nice. I had googled this before (and now). There are folks who have put together scripts and shortcuts, some requiring an additional third party tool. I’m glad that, if not native (or semi-native, like PowerToys), it’s something I already use.

So, I have another reason to recommend BetterMouse. This ties together in one place something I had to tie together in a more complicated fashion.