How to Make Your Mouse Easier To Use
There are a number of ways you can adapt your computer to make it easier to use the mouse. These guides explain how to customise your operating system (Windows or Mac), so that you can use the mouse more easily with your left hand, as well as how to slow down the mouse pointer and increase the delay between clicks when you want to double-click the mouse.
Here is a way to do this…
- Slow down your mouse’s double-click speed
Increase the amount of time between clicks of the mouse button for the computer to recognise a double-click.
- Windows 7
- Mac OS X
How To Slow Down The Mouse’s Double-Click Speed In Windows 7
This page explains step-by-step how to adjust the double-click speed of your mouse in Windows 7. Many people experience difficulty double-clicking (clicking the mouse button twice in quick succession), because they are unable to do two quick clicks of the mouse button in time. The amount of time you have to complete a double-click can easily be increased to make the mouse more manageable.
Note: The ‘Ease of Access Center’ has replaced ‘Accessibility Options’ (which was used in earlier versions of Windows) in the ‘Control Panel’ of Windows 7.
Step 1: Open the ‘Mouse Properties’ window
Right-click anywhere on the desktop and select ‘Personalize‘, to open the ‘Personalization’ window. In the left-hand pane, click on ‘Change Mouse Pointers‘ to open the ‘Mouse Properties’ window shown in Fig 2. If you are unable to do this, use the following alternative method. Otherwise, go to Step 2.
Open the Ease of Access Center window by pressing the Windows key + U, or by clicking the ‘Start‘ button, followed by ‘Control Panel‘, then ‘Ease of Access‘, then ‘Ease of Access Center‘. Under the ‘Explore all settings’ header, click on ‘Make the mouse easier to use‘ (as shown in Fig 1), or press Tab until it is highlighted and then press Enter.
Fig 1
In the ‘Make the mouse easier to use’ window, scroll down to the ‘See also’ header and click on ‘Mouse settings‘, or press Tab until it is highlighted and then press Enter. This will open the ‘Mouse Properties’ window shown in Fig 2.
Step 2: Adjust the double-click speed
If it is not already selected, click on the ‘Buttons‘ tab, or press Tab until any of the tabs is highlighted and then use the arrow keys to select the ‘Buttons‘ tab.
Under the ‘Double-click speed’ header, click on the slider next to ‘Speed‘ and drag it to the speed you want, or press Alt + D and then use the left and right arrow keys to set the speed.
You can test the speed setting you’ve chosen by double-clicking on the folder icon to the right of the slider.
Click the ‘OK‘ button or press Enter to finish.
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