Swap Mouse Buttons: Right-Click ＆ Middle-Click for {Window, Linux}

Xah Lee, 2011-01-23, 2013-04-30

Another input device productivity tip: Swap your right button and middle button's actions.

Why You Should Swap Right-Click ＆ Middle-Click

Why? The right-click action is not much used, and middle-click is much useful. And right button is much easier to press than pressing the mouse wheel.

The right-click almost always activates a context menu. For majority of people, that's mostly used in browser, and not very often.

The mouse wheel button by default does several more useful things in all major browsers:

• Click on a link to open it in new tab.
• Click on a tab to close it. (no need to aim for that little X.)
• Click on a empty spot to start auto-scroll. Useful for fast scroll (faster than mouse-wheel) and for scrolling a large image sideways. (on Linux, Firefox, you need to turn this feature on. 〔☛ Firefox: Set Mouse Wheel Scroll Speed, Backspace for Previous Page, Autoscroll〕)

How to swap right-button ＆ middle-button?

Microsoft Windows

If you have Microsoft mouse, its bundled software (IntelliPoint) can easily do that. I believe Logitech mouse also has bundled software that lets you swap easily.

Otherwise, on Windows, you can use AutoHotkey. Here's the AutoHotkey code to swap:

$RButton::MButton
$MButton::RButton

You can also use AutoHotkey to change the actions for the 4th and 5th buttons. See: AutoHotkey Basics.

Linux

To swap in Ubuntu linux, type this in terminal:

# find out the device id
xinput --list

# swap the middle and right button for device 13
xinput --set-button-map 13 1 3 2

Ban Double Click

You should also make everything single-click. See: Single-click Open File, Auto-Raise Window, for {Windows, Linux}