The basic idea is that while holding down a mouse button, the other mouse buttons become shortcuts for custom actions. Like cut, paste, or anything you'd like. It's a powerful feature that can increase productivity and reduce fatigue.
I first became aware of this when I tried Acme (the plan9 editor), with its mouse chords. Using Acme as my editor did not work out for me, but I could not get the mouse chords out of my head, I wanted to have such chords system wide.
These are the default mouse chords, but they can be customized to anything.
Left + Middle = Cut
Left + Right = Paste
Right + Left = Undo
Right + Middle = Redo
Middle + Left = Return
Middle + Right = Space
Middle + Scroll = Window switcher
Why cut instead of copy? Because Cut + Paste = Copy, that way it is more useful.
- read up on the known issues for your platform.
- Install AutoHotkey.
- Run
windows/mouse-chording.ahkas administrator.
- Install Hammerspoon
- Copy or link
macos/init.luato~/.hammerspoon/init.lua - Run Hammerspoon
- install
xinputandevtest - run
evtestand make note of your USB mouse, something like/dev/input/event3 - run
xinput -listand make note of the device id - run
xinput set-button-map {id} 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0(10 zeroes) - run
evtest /dev/input/event3 | ./mouse-chording.pl
I've found that this works best with a three button mouse where the middle button is a proper button and not hidden under the scroll wheel.
This is kind of rare, but you can probably find one using the phrase "CAD mouse".
This is the mouse I use: https://amzn.asia/d/gwQMNqZ
Here are some other good options:
To get a reliable Cut, Left+Middle is implemented as Ctrl+C Ctrl+X. This is
because when doing Ctrl+X on text that cannot be cut, like the text on a
website or in a PDF, the text will not be copied. So we copy first to make sure
we get something.
To preserve the normal function of the mouse buttons - when pressed individually - the code has to issue click events when a mouse button is released (if no chord was executed). This causes things like the context menu to appear on release rather than on press. Hold and drag with Middle or Right button will not work for the same reason.
Some windows applications will not allow shortcuts using modifier keys to work while a mouse button is pressed. In these applications, mouse chording simply won't work. It seems to only be a problem in older applications (like Putty).
Running AutoHotkey without admin rights will cause it not to work when interacting with application that do run with admin rights.
The touchpad issues mouse events very differently from a USB mouse. Using the touchpad can therefore cause the app to enter an undefined state and fail to run chords or run them incorrectly.
Avoid this problem by disabling mouse chording when switching to the touchpad.
MacOS has a different window switcher than Windows and Linux, Cmd+Tab will
switch between applications instead of windows, and Cmd+GraveAccent (the
key above Tab) will switch between windows for the current application. To
account for this, the Mac version will switch between apps with Middle+Scroll
and between windows with Right+Scroll.
An alternative solution to this, is to install AltTab which is an app-switcher akin to the Windows app-switcher, for MacOS.
The xinput remapping will cause the buttons for the USB mouse to not work
unless the script is running. re-enable the mouse buttons with this command:
xinput set-button-map {id} 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Since the solution depends on a specific device, it will crash and require a restart if the device is unplugged.
- move each platform version to separate directory
- figure out how to retain normal mouse movements on Linux
- refactor mac version to follow similar logic as the others
- define mouse chords in a config file
- add option for defining unique chords by application