Keyboard Shortcut to Swap Mouse Buttons

Question

I use my mouse with both hands and like to switch back and forth for comfort reasons. However, this is made difficult by needing to go through about a zillion layers of menus to swap the buttons each time. Is there an easy way to create a single keyboard shortcut that would swap my left and right mouse button?

Edit: My OS is Windows 7.

Solution 1

As blsub6 mentioned, you can change a registry value (with a command called from a batch file):

REG ADD "HKCU\Control Panel\Mouse" /t REG_SZ /v SwapMouseButtons /d 1 /f

or

REG ADD "HKCU\Control Panel\Mouse" /t REG_SZ /v SwapMouseButtons /d 0 /f

However, you need to logout before it will take effect.

The better solution is to make a tiny .exe with C# to swap the setting, as described in the answers to this question.

Make a text file which you can call swapmouse.cs, containing this:

using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System;

class SwapMouse
{
    [DllImport("user32.dll")]
    public static extern Int32 SwapMouseButton(Int32 bSwap);

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        int rightButtonIsAlreadyPrimary = SwapMouseButton(1);
        if (rightButtonIsAlreadyPrimary != 0)
        {
            SwapMouseButton(0);  // Make the left mousebutton primary
        }
    }
}

And compile it to swapmouse.exe with this command:

"%SystemRoot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v3.5\csc" swapmouse.cs

In more recent versions of .NET you may need to add /out:swapmouse.exe and /target:exe :

"[%SystemRoot%]\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\[version]\csc" /out:swapmouse.exe /target:exe swapmouse.cs

Then you just double-click that exe to swap the mouse buttons. It takes effect immediately.

Or, as rad mentions, you can create a shortcut, and define a keyboard shortcut/hotkey in the Shortcut tab of it's Properties.

Solution 2

This is the Autohotkey version (modified/based on https://github.com/jNizM/AHK_DllCall_WinAPI/blob/master/src/Mouse%20Input%20Functions/SwapMouseButton.ahk).

; autohotkey code - mapped to F12
F12::
    buttonState := DllCall("user32.dll\SwapMouseButton", "UInt", 1)
    if buttonState <> 0
    {
        buttonState := DllCall("user32.dll\SwapMouseButton", "UInt", 0)
    }

This works fine with all Windows (including Windows 10). I usually map it to a hotkey such as "F12" key on my keyboard (using Autohotkey), and I can toggle between left and right mouse button instantly with press of a key. There's no need to muck with loading Control panel or setting registry / rebooting.

Solution 3

The better AHK code:

Run, main.cpl
Send, {Space}{Enter}

I also use mouse with both hands and also have Win7, this code works nice!

Solution 4

Here's an app for that: http://code.google.com/p/mouseswap/

If you have AutoIt installed, here's the script to run in an au3 file:

#NoTrayIcon

HotKeySet("#a","MouseSwap")

Global $Buttons

While 1
   Sleep(50)
WEnd

Func MouseSwap()
   If $Buttons = 0 Then
      DllCall("user32.dll", "int", "SwapMouseButton", "int", 1)
      $Buttons = 1
      SplashTextOn("","E8",280,180,-1,-1,33,"Wingdings",80)
      Sleep(600)
      SplashOff()
   Else
      DllCall("user32.dll", "int", "SwapMouseButton", "int", 0)
      $Buttons = 0
      SplashTextOn("","8F",280,180,-1,-1,33,"Wingdings",80)
      Sleep(600)
      SplashOff()
   EndIf
EndFunc

Solution 5

Keyboard way of switching mouse buttons on Windows Vista (perhaps 7) and above:

1. Windows Key
2. type "mouse"
3. Spacebar
4. Enter

Yeah, it's 8 key presses but not too bad... I've done it a bunch

View more solutions

Comments

[Synetech]

That’s no good, simply changing the registry entry has no effect; the buttons remain unchanged. You would need to reboot or log out and back in for them to take effect.

[Mica]

The exe is just a compiled AutoIt script (similar to AutoHotkey). Instead of the exe, you could run the au3.

[DavidPostill]

Welcome to Super User! This duplicates another answer and adds no new content. Please don't post an answer unless you actually have something new to contribute.

[Rad]

To start the exe by a keyboard shortcut: 1. Right-click on the exe and select "Create Shortcut" 2. Move the shortcut to "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu" or the desktop 3. Right click on the shortcut, go to the Shorcut tab and select a shortcut key

[Przemyslaw Remin]

5. ALT+F4 to close mouse settings window

[Leonid Dworzanski]

This is the best for quicktypers.

[PAS]

highly underrated answer. It's the best!

[Craig Lambie]

This worked for me on Windows 10 - simply install AutoHotKey and save the above code as an AHK file, double click, and/ or make a shortcut :)

[Andrew]

As of June 2021, it still works great on Windows 10. To avoid losing F12, I used control + alt + m instead. So the first line of code would be this: ^!m::