Apple Mighty Mouse to Right-Click in Pro Tools

There’s a ton of cool features in Digidesign Pro Tools that take advantage of right-clicking your mouse.However, by default OSX doesn’t set-up the Apple Mighty Mouse for right-clicking.

Today I’m doing a tutorial specifically for Mac Pro Tools Users who are using the Apple Mighty Mouse, but who haven’t enabled it’s right-click capability yet.

Pro Tools has a ton of features and menus that you can access by right-clicking with your mouse. So if your not doing so already, you’ll definitely want to start using right-clicking as soon as you can.

Now, maybe you’re not sure if you’re using the Mighty Mouse, or not – so here’s what it looks like..

Apple currently includes the Mighty Mouse when you buy a new Mac desktop computer. It has a smooth top shell and a little scrolling ball in the middle. So, if that looks familiar, chances are pretty good that you’re using a mighty mouse.

Now straight out of the box, the Mighty Mouse doesn’t appear to have a left and a right mouse button. But actually it does.

In fact, it has the exact same functionality as any other mouse with two buttons. It’s just that – in the case of the Mighty Mouse, instead of having two buttons- they’ve put sensors under the single top shell of the mouse that detect where your fingers are.

The sensors figure out if you’re doing a left of right click – based on where you press down on the shell. It’s pretty cool.

But in order to use right click functionality with your Mighty Mouse, you do need to tell OSX that you want it to behave like a two button mouse. So that’s what I’m going to show you right now. It’s a really simple thing to do and only take about twenty seconds.

Step 1
First, go up to the top left of your screen and click on the little Apple icon. You’ll see a drop-down menu known as the Apple menu. In the list of items on the Apple menu, you’ll see that there’s one called System Preferences – you’re going to want to click on that.

Step 2
You’ll be presented with a window full of icons representing different OSX preferences.

Step 3
Go to the Keyboard and Mouse item in the second row from the top and click on it.

Step 4
Now, you’re in the Keyboard and Mouse preferences window. At the top you’ll see there’s four or five* tabs – click on the one that says Mouse. (*there’s five items if you’re using a laptop with a trackpad).

Step 5
In the Mouse Preferences window, you’ll see an image of the Mighty Mouse with drop-down menus pointing to different buttons that are on the mouse.

Step 6
Click on the drop-down menu that says Primary Button on the right-side of the image. From the list of options in the drop-down menu select Secondary Button

Final Result
The left side of the mouse should still be assigned to the Primary Button. However, the Right side is now assigned to the Secondary Button. Your Apple Mighty Mouse is now set up to operate just like a two button mouse you can now start taking advantage of the dozens of Right-Click features in Digidesign Pro Tools (or any other Mac software for that matter!).

Tagged as: short, shortcuts