[zavertnik]

I have used SteerMouse for years after giving up on the dumpster fire that is Logitech's G-HUB for macOS for my G600, which has 12 side buttons + a the G-Shift button which when held acts a modifier for additional macros.

My issue with SteerMouse is that when creating chord macros, it forces the original macro to only work when depressed, rather than activating upon press.

I haven't been able to find a suitable replacement. Curious if anyone here on HN has worked around this in any way?

[pxc]

Hardware QA is sometimes hit and miss, but Roccat mice have a shift feature that is implemented in firmware. The same goes for their macros: their mouse emulates a keyboard at the hardware level. That way it Just Werks and you don't need some cringey gamer-themed spyware always running in the background just to make full use of it, like you do for many features with Logitech mice. My go-to atm is the Kone XP, which doesn't have as many side buttons as the Logitech G6xx mice. They do make an 'MMO mouse' with many many buttons like that called the 'Nyth'.

Unfortunately their configuration software hasn't supported macOS for a long time, but you can configure your device on a Windows VM via USB passthrough, which is what I do. Alternatively, there are also several reverse-engineered tools for configuring Roccat mice, including libratbag (and the older roccat-tools) for Linux and roccat-iokit for macOS, if you'd be interested in either choosing a model according to what's supported there or adding support for the Nyth.

[zavertnik]

I wasn't aware of Roccat! sounds like what I'm after, especially without the gamer aesthetics. The Roccat Nyth looks close to what I'm after, but I'm pretty married to my muscle memory with using 4x3 buttons (of which are all in use, in both layers).

Because it is possible with G-Hub, I was just curious if anyone knew what the gap is between SteerMouse's support and G-Hub's support for the seamless G-Shift/shift key experience. I don't know enough about hardware to make a guess.

I'm 100% fine with using a separate OS to config the mouse, since my layout is not app specific. Despite the button layout difference, this will definitely be the mouse I try out next.

[pxc]

> I wasn't aware of Roccat! sounds like what I'm after, especially without the gamer aesthetics. The Roccat Nyth looks close to what I'm after, but I'm pretty married to my muscle memory with using 4x3 buttons (of which are all in use, in both layers).

Oh the mouse will be a bit gamer-y. You'll only get to escape from the gamer-y software. :)

In seriousness, I love mine for 'productivity' (a more pleasant desktop experience).

> Because it is possible with G-Hub, I was just curious if anyone knew what the gap is between SteerMouse's support and G-Hub's support for the seamless G-Shift/shift key experience. I don't know enough about hardware to make a guess.

I also have a similar Logitech mouse, the wireless G602. I can't remember all of the details, but one of the things I wanted to do with it (I think bind a layer 2 button press to a key chord) is something I was told I couldn't do 'without G-Hub', and in particular its Lua scripting interface.

I'm mildly curious about the division of duties there, too, which presumably also explains the behavior you observed (SteerMouse has to reimplement something G-Hub normally takes care of, and they did it differently).

[kstrauser]

Can you explain more of what you mean there?

[zavertnik]

Haha, of course!

So when you click a button on the G600 (and most other mice with side buttons), the button fires when you press down, just like the Mouse 1 or Mouse 2 button. On the G600, there is a third click button to the right of the right click, which is called G-Shift. When pressed, all of the side buttons have secondary assignments. Since you have to hold G-Shift to access this other layer, the macros are often referred to as chords in mouse customization software like Steermouse, since it requires two buttons to fire.

To configure this, you need the G-Hub software, which is in a nightmarish state on macOS. To get around this, I use Steermouse. Steermouse lets me get around this, however with one trade off. If a side button has two assignments (one when pressed by itself, another when pressed with the G-Shift), then the button does not actually fire when its pressed, but instead fires when the button is depressed/let go of. I imagine this is just how Steermouse handles buttons which have more than one assignment.

I haven't found a suitable replacement that is as robust as steermouse. Its one of the first apps I install on my mac, but this is one killer feature that I've only found in the G-Hub app.

[ekaryotic]

I believe the poster means that the macro operation is that of an astable multivibrator, whereas they would prefer that it be that of a one shot multivibrator.

[kstrauser]

Ah, got it. Yeah, I don't think there's a way to do that.