Map your mouse side buttons to actions

Your mouse probably has more buttons than macOS uses. Back and Forward often do nothing, the middle button rarely does much, and any extra side buttons are dead weight. With GestureCraft you can bind those buttons to real actions: a keyboard shortcut, an app launch, an Apple Shortcut, a window snap, or a script. And a button can do two things — one on a quick click, another on a press-and-hold. (Full disclosure: I make GestureCraft. BetterTouchTool and mouse-specific tools can remap buttons too; GestureCraft is the simpler, native, one-time-$7.99 way to get just this.)

One thing to be clear about up front: this is button remapping, click and hold. It is not scroll smoothing, DPI, or pointer-acceleration tuning. If you want those, a dedicated mouse utility is the right tool. GestureCraft handles what your spare buttons do.

Step by step

1. Connect your mouse and open Add Rule

   Plug in or pair your mouse, then in GestureCraft click Add Rule. Each rule reads like a sentence: When I press a button, run an action, in an app.

2. Choose a mouse button as the trigger

   Under When I, pick the mouse-button trigger, click the button field, and press the side button you want to map. GestureCraft captures Right, Middle, Back, Forward, and extra side buttons that report as numbered buttons.

3. Pick Click or Hold

   Once a non-right button is captured, choose Click or Hold. Middle, Back, Forward, and extra buttons support both. Right is click-only, because a right-hold stays your normal context menu. The left button is never available, so ordinary clicking is untouched.

4. Set what it runs

   Under run, record a keyboard shortcut or key sequence, choose an output mouse click, or pick a command — open an app, open a URL or file, run a Shortcut, a window-snap action, or a shell script.

5. Scope it to one app or everywhere

   Under in, leave the rule on All Apps, or scope it to a single app so the same button can do different things per app.

6. Save and use it

   Save the rule. A short press fires your Click rule; pressing and holding past about 0.30 seconds fires your Hold rule. If a Hold-only button gets a short press with no Click rule, that short press is swallowed rather than passed through.

Ideas worth mapping

A spare button is fastest for the things you reach for all day.

• Back button click → go Back — or a keyboard shortcut, scoped to your browser.
• Forward button click → go Forward — scoped per app so it fits each one.
• Middle button hold → run an Apple Shortcut — or open an app.
• Extra side button click → snap the front window to the left half of the screen.
• Middle button click → paste, while a middle-button hold runs a different action on the same button.

Because click and hold are separate rules, one button can carry two jobs. And because the trigger and the action are separate, you can change what a button does later without touching the button itself.

Why remap buttons instead of learning shortcuts?

A mouse button is already under your finger. There is nothing to memorize and nothing to reach for. The good keyboard combinations are already taken by apps, and the free ones are the awkward stretches you forget. A spare button is a reliable place to put the one thing you do over and over. GestureCraft is also event-driven, so it sits at near-zero idle CPU — it only does work the instant you press a button, and never runs a background polling loop that drains battery while it waits.

Prefer a trackpad gesture or a keyboard shortcut for some of this? GestureCraft does those too. See the best Mac trackpad gesture app guide, the full roundup of Mac gesture and input apps, or the guides on launching an app from a gesture and running an Apple Shortcut from a gesture.