I plug a mouse into my Chromebook to make it easier to use and am wondering if there are any ways to customize what each button does? I have this set up on my PC and it’s a great time saver…
Every time ChromeOS updates, it gets just a bit closer to being a Microsoft Windows device. From its humble beginnings as “the web browser as the operating system”, Chromebooks sure seem to be evolving into lower price PCs. Then again, with the latest Chromebook spec, called “Chromebook Plus”, you can now easily spend over $1000, and even non-Plus configurations like the Chromebook like the HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook cost over $2,000!
But whether you have a $200 used unit from school or one of the latest and greatest, they all have the ability to work with external peripherals like mice and trackballs. Better yet, they all allow you to customize quite a bit about the peripheral’s behavior. Step one, as always, is to ensure you have the very latest version of ChromeOS on your computer. Now…
CHROMEBOOK MOUSE SETTINGS
Go into the “Settings” area of your Chromebook and look for the “Device” category:
There are quite a few choices, including TrackPoint (generally a peripheral that’s only found on Lenovo computers) and even a Stylus (if your computer has the hardware to detect its use). For this task, click or tap on “Mouse” to proceed.
The simple mouse I’ve plugged into my Lenovo Chromebook is identified as a “PixArt USB Optical Mouse”, as shown at the very top. Each mouse has different configuration options, so yours might be slightly different. For this unit, the primary options are Cursor acceleration and Cursor speed, along with the ability to enable “normal” or “reverse” scrolling. These are generally set-test-change settings so feel free to experiment to get the optional configuration.
Scroll down a bit further in this window and it turns out there are more options:
Though it’s confusingly labeled, “Controlled scrolling” is related to Scroll acceleration. Click on the “Learn more” link to read Google’s explanation.
What we seek is the very last option: “Customize mouse buttons“.
HOW TO CUSTOMIZE MOUSE BUTTONS
Click on the “Customize mouse buttons” link and you’ll see a bunch of additional settings:
This mouse is identified as having left and right buttons, along with a “Middle Button”. I’ve clicked on that and it’s brought up the menu with some of the many choices and options. None of those fit the bill? Scroll down; the menu’s pretty extensive…
If you want to customize it fully, for example to add a keyboard shortcut for a game or favorite app, click on “Create key combination“. Otherwise, choose one from the list.
TESTING CUSTOM MOUSE BUTTON ACTIONS
To test this feature, I chose “High contrast on/off” as the action to take when the middle button is pressed on my mouse. I closed the window and pushed the button, to have this appear almost instantaneously:
Unsure why it’s called “high contrast” in the menu but “color inversion” in the feature itself, but a click on “Continue” and the entire screen reverses colors, with black becoming white and white, black. A second click and it reverse-reverses, making it all back to normal. Quite convenient if contrast can be an issue, and startlingly fast once setup.
NOTE: I also tried out the Emoji Picker shortcut but couldn’t get it to work. Hopefully, a future version of ChromeOS will fix this bug.
While we’re talking about buttons, I skipped over a setting earlier: “Primary mouse button“. Again, though not very well explained, that slide lets you reverse the meaning of the left and right buttons (great for lefties!). I disabled it and suddenly a left click brought up the context menu rather than just changing the setting back:
Between all of these settings, your mouse, trackpad, or trackball has a huge amount of customizability. Take your time and test options to get the perfect setup for your own Chromebook!
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!