Don't Push The Button (Backsauce) Mac OS

Choose Apple menu Restart or, if your Mac isn't responding, press and hold Touch ID (power button) until your Mac turns off. Using Esc in Windows When you use Boot Camp to run Windows 10 on your Mac, Esc is in the same place on the Touch Bar as it is when you're using macOS. Boot to the Recovery HD:Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button. Power button: Press to turn on your Mac or wake it from sleep. Press and hold for 1.5 seconds to put your Mac to sleep. Continue holding to force your Mac to turn off. Option–Command–Power button. or Option–Command–Media Eject: Put your Mac to sleep. Control–Shift–Power button. or Control–Shift–Media Eject: Put your displays. By Damien / Mar 3, 2017 / Mac. If you are a seasoned Mac user, you will know that the shortcut keys “Command + Left arrow” and “Command + Right arrow” move the cursor to the start and end of the line respectively. However, if you use a full-size external keyboard for your Mac, you will find that the “Home” and “End” buttons aren’t working properly.

If you want to use mouse buttons #4 and #5 to go forward / backward in Mac OS X out of the box you’re going to be disappointed, and end up with just a scroll icon appearing.

There’s a few utilities you can use to fix this:

  • Microsoft IntelliPoint – Only works with MS mice, doesn’t seem to work in Mountain Lion
  • Logitech Control Centre – Only works with Logitech mice, apparently quite buggy now
  • Razer software – not tested, will only work with Razer mice anyway
  • Steermouse – Getting increasingly flakey with new OS X versions
  • USB Overdrive – Not been in development since Snow Leopard, doesn’t seem to work 100% of the time anymore
  • ControllerMate – Works!

ControllerMate to the rescue!

ControllerMate is actively developed & maintained, and offers an incredible amount of customisation for all HID peripherals. So not only will it sort out your back / forward issue, it’ll also solve the mouse acceleration issue – if that’s a problem for you. This guide will cover back / forward only, though.

1. First download and install ControllerMate.

2. Reboot and launch ControllerMate.

Mac

You’ll now be presented with a scary as hell screen that looks like you’re laying out circuit boards, rather than fixing a major limitation in OS X.

The diagrams in place on first launch are a kind of mini tutorial, telling you how you can do a few things. You can either leave them in place for future reference, or delete them to clean up the view.

The first step is to create a new Programming Group:

3. To do this, right-click in the sidebar and select ‘Create Programming Group”.

4. Afterwards, right-click on the new group, and select ‘Create Programming Page’.

5. Now right-click on the new group again, point to ‘Create Driver Configuration’, then select your mouse.

You can name your new items in the ‘Inspector’ window to the right.

6. Click on your programming page to display an empty grid.

7. In the ‘Palette’ to the right, select ‘Controllers’ from the drop down list. Find your mouse, then drag button #4, and button #5 to the grid.

8. Now select ‘Output’ from the drop down list in the Palette. Drag an instance of ‘Keystrokes Building Block’ underneath each of your mouse button instances.

You should now have something like this (without the green lines):

9. Link the blocks, by dragging from the button’s green hotspot, to the action’s green hotspot. Just as in the screenshot above.

10. Click on the keystroke block for button #4. In the Inspector window, click on the ‘Keys’ tab, then click on ‘Capture’. Enter they key combination for ‘Back’ (Command + [), then press stop.

If the command doesn’t appear correctly, click on ‘Open Keystrokes Palette’, and drag the buttons from the virtual keyboard to the window, as seen above.

11. Do the same for button #5’s keystroke block, but this time use the command for forward (Command + ]).

Don't Push The Button (backsauce) Mac Os Download

12. Click on the driver configuration item in the sidebar, and set buttons #4 and #5 to ‘None’.

You’re now done! Backward / Forward should work immediately in all apps.

Don't Push The Button (backsauce) Mac Os Update

But now my VM / Other App doesn’t respond to buttons #4 and #5!

This is a problem as a result of disabling the buttons and remapping them to forward / back. Fortunately there is a solution!

  1. Click on the group in the sidebar
  2. In the ‘Inspector’ window, check ‘Activate items when these applications are:’, select ‘running’
  3. Add all of the apps that you want to add back / forward support to the list.

Now the mouse will work in all applications. If an app supports backward / forward, remember to add it to the list above.

More VM

Not all VMs support the extra mouse buttons, even if they’re receiving them. If you’re having trouble, try following my follow-up guide for Parallels.

Mac OS X volume keys not working? Try these tricks.

Have you lost control of your keyboard volume keys on your Macintosh, especially since upgrading to Mac OS X El Capitan? You’re not alone. Here’s a few things to try if you suddenly cannot control your volume keys on your MacBook, MacBook Pro, iMac or any other Macintosh computer.

First, make sure you aren’t running the TIDAL music player software–this seems to be a common thread for the Macintosh keyboard volume keys not working. TIDAL is a streaming music service that has a corresponding software component that can cause the Mac volume keys to simply stop working. To test this theory, simply quit the TIDAL application on the Mac and see if your volume keys begin to work. If this is the case, simply stop using the TIDAL application to have your Mac volume buttons back to normal.

Another trick to try when you cannot get the volume keys on the Mac to work is to check inside of the system preferences. Locate the Keyboard system preference and note the status of the checkbox that says “Use all F1, F2, etc. as function keys.” If this box is checked, try unchecking it to return the Mac volume keys to normal working order. If the box is checked, this could be causing your Mac OS X volume keys not to work.

Lastly, make sure you don’t have the Google Music extension in Chrome running on your Mac, which could be hijacking all of your media keys, including the iTunes software. By removing this extension, you may fix the volume key issue on your Mac.

Let us know in the comments below if any of these tricks worked to regain control of your Mac OS X volume keys, or, if you have other tips and tricks to help our readers with this common issue on the Mac.