How to customize your mouse buttons on a Chromebook [VIDEO]

For years at this point, peripherals and accessories have “just worked” on Chromebooks. And while that’s not changing anytime soon, Google is close to releasing a new feature that takes this “just works” mentality to the next level, specifically for your 3rd-party mouse. Whether its a gaming mouse, a Bluetooth mouse or one that connects via USB dongle (like a Logitech device), no specialized software is needed to change what all the buttons on your mouse actually do.

Get on ChromeOS 120 and turn on a feature flag

First and foremost, this new feature is available in ChromeOS 120 Beta and that version is set to arrive in the Stable Channel later this month. With it will likely come this new feature, so all you’ll need to do at that point is turn on the flag responsible for custom mouse button controls, found here: chrome://flags/#enable-peripheral-customization.

You can try this out right now by moving to the Beta Channel, or you can just wait for ChromeOS 120 to arrive soon. Either way, once you have turned that flag on and restarted, you’ll have the new options we showcase in the video below to click any button on your mouse and choose an action for it. The interface is simple, the options are solid, and there’s a particular button mapping that makes this new feature nearly limitless in its customization possibilities.

Go to your mouse settings to customize your buttons

Once you have the flag enabled, go to Settings > Device > Mouse and find your connected mouse that you want to work with. Under that mouse, you should now see a menu item called Customize mouse buttons and that’s where you want to go.

Click the buttons you want to change

Once in this menu, you can simply click any of the buttons on your mouse to get them registered, and then from the drop-down menu that appears next to that button selection, you’ll have a list of out-of-the-box options to choose from. Options like overview, screenshot, and emoji picker are included.

Customize further with mapped keyboard shortcuts

But you can take this all a step further with keyboard shortcuts. At the bottom of the action selection menu, you can opt to map a specific keyboard combination to your mouse button, really expanding on what you can make your mouse capable of. One thing I use frequently is the new Mulit-paste tool, and this is pulled up with a SEARCH + V key combo. Mapping those keys to a button on the mouse allows me to pull up the Multi-paste function at the click of a single button.

That’s about it! With the addition of keyboard mapping, this new custom mouse button feature is really only limited by your imagination. Once you figure out what things you really could use in those extra mouse buttons, you can bascially set them to do just about anything on your Chromebook. I can’t wait for this feature to simply be an everyday part of ChromeOS, but at least with just a feature flag, it should be arriving later this month as ChromeOS 120 rolls out to the Stable Channel.