And no, we’re not overstating things.

However, nowadays, we’re navigating the web differently.

Instead of continuously going Back and Forward, we open and discard tabs.

remap-mouse-keys

Similarly, many mice allow you to tilt the wheel to scroll left and right.

Theoretically, this makes sense: it’s named “scroll wheel” for a reason.

And yet, how many times do you scroll horizontally every day?

Logitech’s official software offers a straightforward customization interface.

If you’re not spending most of your time in Excel, the answer’s probably “never”.

Why not map those buttons to something actually useful?

Still, there’s no arguing: easy access to those features is admittedly helpful.

Start by mapping Enter and Escape to your mouse’s two thumb buttons.

Why map those keys to something else?

The answer’s simple: because you’ll use this “something else” all day, every day.

As you’ll see, our mappings aren’t random, nor based on how we use our PCs.

Assign your mouse’s shift support to one of the buttons to effectively double the number of functions you can map to its buttons.

Quite the opposite, they’re even more useful than the defaults for the vast majority of users.

What Mouse Should You Use?

For this guide, we’ll use Logitech’s G502 Hero mouse.

Map Backspace and Delete to your wheel’s tilt-accessible buttons for easier text editing and navigation in many programs. Be extra-careful in your file manager, though.

Based on its popularity, we can safely guess that many of you might also be using it.

you’re able to follow along with a different mouse, as long as it’s also programmable.

You’ll only need its official software or a third-party tool that allows button remapping.

Although it depends on their purpose, usually most macros should be set to run only once.

Our most essential tweaks only need the two thumb and two wheel buttons.

In Logitech’s software that we’re using, we first had to press the G502 Hero mouse.

grab the first thumb button and map it to a simple Enter keypress.

Choose to create a “recorded keystrokes” macro to have your mouse “replay” a sequence of keypresses on your keyboard.

Repeat for the second thumb button, but map it to Escape.

That was the first piece of magic.

Let’s move to the wheel.

To create a Minimize Window macro, start recording your keyboard keypresses, keep the Windows Key held down, and press the Cursor Down key twice.

Creating a Better Mouse Wheel

Move to your mouse’s wheel configuration page or menu.

Remap the wheel’s left tilt/click to the Backspace key of your keyboard.

Then, remap its right tilt/click to Delete.

Assigning a macro to a shifted mouse wheel tilt

Remember to check our guide onhow to fix a mouse that double-clicks on single-clicks.

After mapping Delete to one of them, you wouldn’t want it clicking “on its own”.

Let’s see a great way to use it.

However, we won’t map single keypresses to them.

Instead, we’ll go for macros.

Set the macro to run only once when you press the mouse button where it’s assigned.

For us, that meant choosing theNO REPEAToption.

Keep the Left Windows key held and press the cursor down key twice.

For us, the macro showedLeft Windows + Down + Down.

secure your newly created macro, and then repeat the process to record a second one.

Return to the main mouse-button-remapping screen or menu.

Then, map those two macros to the “shifted” left and right wheel tilt/clicks, respectively.

While there, also mapPage UpandPage Downkey presses to the “shifted” state of your wheel scroll up/down.

Page Up forShift + Wheel Up, Page Down forShift + Wheel Down.

And with those final tweaks, we’re done.

But, how and why is our setup supposed to be “better” than the defaults?

Except if deleting what you selected was what you wanted.

We probably don’t have to explain what our aptly named Reopen Closed Tab and Minimize Window macros do.

Keep the mouse shift-state button held, and flick your mouse wheel to the left or right.