Side mouse buttons on MacOS

Mouse side buttons on MacOS generally do nothing, or do the same thing as middle click. Since Apple doesn’t produce a mouse with side buttons, they just don’t care. Sigh.

The biggest loss for me in this regard has been the extremely convenient browser Back / Forward history navigation. I’ve learned to live without it (I left windows 9 years ago), but today I learned, that you can make your side mouse buttons useful again!

Download LinearMouse:

brew install --cask linearmouse

And toggle this one setting. It’s such a popular use case that it’s built right in!

I also really appreciate the option to easily hide the app. I expect it to run 24/7 from now on and my menu bar is already busy enough :)