Customize USB Mouse Buttons on a Chromebook

For an operating system that started out as “let’s make the browser the OS!” ChromeOS has come quite a long way with its features and capabilities. I would suggest that ChromeOS 125 [the latest version as of this tutorial] is surprisingly close to Microsoft Windows 11 in many features and the interface and user experience, including extensive support for external devices. Including, as it happens, wired USB mice!

As always, the first step should be to update your Chromebook to the very latest version of ChromeOS. Easily done: How to Force Update ChromeOS. Once that’s done you’ll want to go to Settings. Then…

CONNECTING A WIRED USB MOUSE

If you have a wireless Bluetooth mouse it’s an entirely different process, but I’ll talk more about that in a moment. For now, let’s proceed with a wired mouse. Plug it in. Then go to Settings > Device:

Since most Chromebooks have a touchpad, the “Mouse” entry doesn’t show up unless you have a mouse plugged in, so if you go to “Device” and it’s not there, plug that puppy into your device and it should appear.

Have a wireless mouse? If it’s working with a dongle, plug the dongle in and turn on the mouse. It should show up as a device in a manner that’s functionally identical to a wired mouse. If it’s via Bluetooth, however, as some are, then it’s going to show up in the Settings > Bluetooth area.

BASIC CHROMEOS MOUSE CONFIGURATION

Click on the “Mouse” entry to proceed…

These are two of the most important settings to adjust to your personal preference: Cursor acceleration and Cursor speed. I find that I’m used to the defaults on my own Lenovo Chromebook, but if you use it and find it’s too fast or to slow in tracking your motion, this is where you tweak those settings.

Scroll down on this window to get to more key configuration options:

The third key change to make is scrolling speed. If your mouse has a wheel of some sort, as my Macally mouse does, then this will also affect how quickly you scroll based on spinning the wheel.

Many people like “reverse scrolling” too, but I’m too used to the Apple Mac way of mapping the scroll gesture to the change in content on the screen, so I find it baffling.

CUSTOMIZE THE MOUSE BUTTON

And, finally, we can look at how to customize one or more extra buttons on your mouse (or trackball, which look identical to the operating system). Click on the very last option on this screen, “Customize mouse buttons”.

The process from this point is pretty simple; click on the button you want to customize, and it’ll show up in this window. Click on it in the window and you’ll be able to decide what function you want to have it trigger.

For example, the scrollwheel on the Macally mouse is also a button if you press it down. I push on that and it appears in the window:

The menu “Default” hides a lot of possible actions, so many that I’ve created a composite image with all the options:

There are some really helpful choices on this list! I really like the Mute option (“Volume on/off”), the Screenshot option, and the ever-helpful Emoji Picker. Some might also find the Magnifier on/off feature quite helpful. Don’t want anything to happen upon click? Choose “Disable“.

But we want to customize the action associated with this button. That’s done by choosing “Create key combination“, which then brings up this window:

It’s not smart enough to only be functional within a specific app, notice, but you can still set up a custom key combination for your favorite application anyway. Just try to avoid using it anywhere else in ChromeOS.

Anyway, that’s it. You now know how to hook up your mouse, have it identify different buttons on the device, and assign specific ChromeOS actions – or your own custom key combination – to have it work perfectly for you. Good luck!

Pro Tip: I’ve been writing about ChromeOS since it was introduced and have accumulated a LOT of helpful tutorials. Please check out my ChromeOS Help Area while you’re visiting. Thanks!