How do I reassign mouse buttons?

Microsoft Mouse and Keyboard Center software provides default commands for all of the mouse buttons. You can reassign some buttons to different commands or keyboard shortcuts to better fit your work style. You can also disable buttons you might press accidentally, such as the wheel button. If you don’t have the software or want to learn more, go to Mouse & Keyboard Center Download.

To reassign a button across all applications

Using the mouse that you want to configure, start Microsoft Mouse and Keyboard Center.

Select basic settings.

Select the button that you want to reassign.

In the list of the button that you want to reassign, select a command.
To disable a button, select Disable this button.

You must assign the Click command to either the left or right button. You can assign this command to additional buttons if you want.

Reassigned button commands may not work as expected for some programs or games. Some programs or games may not support customized button assignments.

Some mouse models include specialized buttons that cannot be reassigned.

How do I reassign my mouse buttons for a specific application?

You can assign mouse buttons to perform different commands in different programs. For example, you can assign the same mouse button to activate Digital Ink when in PowerPoint, a macro when in a game, and the Magnifier when in any other application.

To reassign a button for a specific program

Using the mouse that you want to configure, start Microsoft Mouse and Keyboard Center.

Select the app-specific settings.

Click Add New button, select the program that you want.
If the program that you want is not on the list, click Manually Add a Program at the bottom, select the program.

In the button command list, select a command.

To use a button that has been reassigned for a specific program

Start the program and click the reassigned button.

Note: If you open a program by using the Run as administrator command, you will not have access to application-specific mouse button settings. Instead, the mouse will use the global mouse button assignments. To enable application-specific mouse button settings, open the application without administrator credentials, or log on to Windows as an administrator.

Games buttons in windows

Hello everyone, i am currently having a problem when i can use the windows button when csgo is closed or minimized, but when i’m in game, i press it, but it doesn’t work. Please someone help me.

Hello everyone, i am currently having a problem when i can use the windows button when csgo is closed or minimized, but when i’m in game, i press it, but it doesn’t work. Please someone help me.

Are you in windowed or fullscreen mode and using two monitors?

I don’t know how to solve this but you can use an alternative method if you want to tab out of the game, which is Alt+Tab

Are you in windowed or fullscreen mode and using two monitors?

i am using one monitor with fullscreen

Start Menu button not working anymore, worked before btw, don#t really understand why it stopped working when it worked before.
Never thinking of alt-tab before lol Thank you much for the info.

Windows has a Gaming Mode option. It prevents the use of the windows key to view the desktop because most of the time when it’s pressed by gamer’s it was a mistake and gets gamers very frustrated. So windows implemented Gamer Mode option so that gamers won’t accidentally get to desktop while playing a game 😀 You can disable this feature in Windows.

Start Menu button not working anymore, worked before btw, don#t really understand why it stopped working when it worked before.
Never thinking of alt-tab before lol Thank you much for the info.

Windows has a Gaming Mode option. It prevents the use of the windows key to view the desktop because most of the time when it’s pressed by gamer’s it was a mistake and gets gamers very frustrated. So windows implemented Gamer Mode option so that gamers won’t accidentally get to desktop while playing a game 😀 You can disable this feature in Windows.

How to use the Windows 10 Xbox Game Bar: Game capture, screenshots, widgets, and more

The Windows 10 Game Bar is an underrated feature which allows you to easily screenshot, record, and stream directly from a game (or app) without the need for external software. Recently, the Game Bar got a fresh coat of paint, along with speed improvements and other new features. Here’s what you need to know.

How to enable the Windows 10 Game Bar

First, make sure the Game Bar is actually enabled. It should be turned on by default, but here’s how to find it.

1. Open the Settings menu by clicking the cogwheel in the Start Menu.
2. Select Gaming in the Settings Menu.

Select Game Bar.

Make sure it’s set to On as pictured above.

In this menu, you can also customize and review the hotkeys available for the Game Bar. It’s worth knowing where they are for future reference.

How to use the Windows 10 Xbox Game Bar in games (and apps)

The Game Bar in Windows 10 is enabled by pressing Windows Key + G or by pressing the Xbox button on a connected Xbox controller. Windows Key + G opens an overlay bar which gives you access to numerous functions and features. There are a few nuances to its use you need to be aware of.

• It seems to work best while using games from the Windows 10 Microsoft Store. This is because these games are enabled to use the Game Bar by default.
• It seems to work with all Win32 games as of the May 2019 update. If you find that you can’t see the overlay, you can try running your game in windowed mode, or by using the Game Bar hotkeys (they should still work, you just won’t be able to see the overlay).
• You can actually use the Game Bar with any app from the Windows 10 Microsoft Store, as well as any Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app, even if it’s not a game. This can be handy for recording apps like Microsoft Edge, but it may not work with some older programs.
• Enabling Game Bar (and Game DVR, which is the recording service) might impact the performance of your game or app.

What the Windows 10 Game Bar buttons actually do

Turning on the Game Bar should release your mouse cursor from the game. You can mouse over the individual controls to see what they do and see their hotkeys, but here’s an overview from left to right.

• The main Game Bar overlay in the top center lets you enable or disable different Game Bar modules.
• The cogwheel at the top on the right grants access to additional settings.
• The Broadcast & Capture module (on the left by default) gives quick access to capture controls.
• The camera icon depicts the screenshot button.
• The recording symbol with an arrow depicts clip capture. Hit this to record the previous thirty seconds of footage from your DVR buffer (or longer, configurable via the settings menu).
• Hit the recording symbol to start a recording.
• The mic symbol allows you to mute or enable your microphone while capturing.
• The broadcast symbol lets you stream to a connected Mixer account.
• The Show all captures button opens up the folder where your captures are stored.
• Below these, the Audio section allows you to control the sound mix of various sound devices and apps active on your setup.
• You also have Windows 10 performance modules, Xbox social and chat tabs, as well as Spotify controls.

Configuring Game DVR

When it comes to recording footage and taking screenshots with the Game Bar, there are a number of settings you can tweak to improve your experience. Here’s a rundown of where to find them, and what you can fix.

1. Open the Settings menu by clicking the cogwheel in the Start Menu.
2. Select Gaming in the Settings Menu.
3. Select Game DVR, as shown above.

Using the Game DVR settings menu, you can configure the following things:

• You can change the location of stored captures.
• Set the DVR to maintain background recording for capturing recent moments.
• Change settings for when background recording should be maintained (on battery, off battery, etc.).
• Change audio recording settings, such as mic levels.
• Change video capture quality, including resolution and frame rate (set lower for better performance).
• Enable or disable cursor capture in videos.

Settings via the Game Bar

When you’re inside the Game Bar itself, you can access most of the settings from the overlays itself. To do this, follow these steps.

1. Open the Game Bar inside a game by pressing Windows Key + G.
2. Click on the Settings cogwheel.

From here, you can change most of the same settings that you can via the Windows 10 main settings menu, such as notifications, whether background recording is enabled or not, and whether to include microphone audio or not in the recordings, and so on.

More Game Bar features

If you want to disable the Game Bar to save resources, broadcast to Mixer, or use Game Mode, we have a bunch of resources tailored to that end below.

Additional resources

For more helpful articles, coverage, and answers to common questions about Windows 10, visit the following resources:

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How to create mouse specific buttons in windows [closed]

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Closed 5 years ago .

As an owner of a Logitech G600, there are a lot of buttons on the side of the mouse (16 to be exact).

In the software that comes with the mouse you can only set keybinds using what you can find on the keyboard.

On some other mice that I’ve seen, they have binds like «MOUSE_4»

My question is: Can I create commands like «MOUSE_X» that I can assign to all of my mouse buttons — which aren’t naturally available to me.

Because you can bind the keys to run a script, is there a script i could use to issue a command of my choice

e.g. when button G16 is pressed, return «MOUSE_8»

2 Answers 2

I don’t know if I understood your question correctly; but from what I understood, you would like to «swap» some buttons of your mouse.

I have a Logitech G700, and a few weeks after buying it, the middle button (wheel click) stopped working. I have since exchanged a thumb button with the middle click button using the Logitech software (Logitech Gaming Software) if I remember right) available from the Logitech website.

Since then, the mouse has the buttons permanently exchanged in its firmware, so that when I use it on another computer/Operating System, the middle click is still assigned to the thumb button of my choice.

So if you want to swap buttons (if I remember right, it is also possible to «duplicate» buttons, i.e. assign the same event to multiple different buttons), that might just do it.

After understanding the question more clearly, it is about defining new system input events. Since this question is posted in Arqade, I will assume that the Operating System is one of the Windows Family. On other operating systems (such as MacOS or Linux or other UNIXes), the answer would be drastically different.

And as the other answer already indicated, the short answer is «No. You cannot do that.».

The long answer is:

The hardware device defined as «mouse» contains electronics, which register your input into some buffered memory, which is in turn polled by your operating system (if you use USB. If you use PS/2 the behavior is different and will use interrupts (IRQ) instead of polling — but in the scope of this answer, it is mostly irrelevant). Then the operating system interprets the data obtained via polling, and passes in turn to your application (Game, in our case).

Software wise, the chain is as follow: Mouse firmware (in the mouse) → Mouse Driver (in the OS) → Operating System → Application.

As you can see, this chain involves a handful of different components, and all of them are required to understand an event for it to be passed on.

While your firmware needs to know about different buttons to be able to assign different actions to each of them, and while your driver also needs to understand the corresponding messages (so, different ones) to be able to pass them to the Operating System; windows has a predefined list of understood virtual events for both the mouse and the keyboard, and a predefined list of mouse_event flags. While I don’t know if/when those VK_* constants are actually used for the mouse handling (I know they are for the keyboard), it is clear from both lists that only five mouse buttons are supported by windows. This is confirmed here.

So, why did I type all this, if it is indeed impossible to do what you want?

Because the limitation here is Windows, and there is a way (without using a different Operating System) to circumvent that limitation. That way is: to use unassigned but defined key codes. I am not talking about the key codes such as VK_A or VK_0 that you might want to use in your game (A is pretty useful in FPSes for strafing left, for example); but key codes such as VK_F13 to VK_F_24 (included) for example, which are not used, because they correspond to obsolete Function keys that aren’t present on any modern keyboard (as far as I know).

That would extend the possible number of mouse buttons from five to seventeen. If needed, you might also decide to use a couple of other key codes that aren’t used such as VK_Print , in order to extend the number of available buttons to all the buttons you have.

That would make all your buttons available in any game that uses the Microsoft Windows API to scan for input. So virtually any windows game.

Finally: I am not 100% certain that there is no way in Microsoft Windows to actually use more than 5 mouse buttons at a given time (even if the doc says so), but using unused VK_ constants will work.

As correctly remarked by MSalters in the comments, it is possible for games which are using DirectInput (part of DirectX) to recognize up to 8 buttons. While this is far from sufficient for fully answering the question, it is so far the best alternative. Unfortunately, it requires the game to implement it (which should be fairly common, since it is also used for standard controllers and such).

So far, I have actually no idea how to simulate a F_13 or F_24 key as autohotkey does not work with the Logitech Gaming Software. I will post a complete solution here as soon as I find one.