Apple - Utility to identify what mouse buttons are being pressed?
Hammerspoon can be scripted to do this.
- Install Hammerspoon and run it.
- Open
System Preferences
, go toSecurity & Privacy
and enableHammerspoon.app
underAccessibility
. - Click the Hammerspoon menu icon and select
Open Config
. Your default code/text editor will open to~/.hammerspoon/init.lua
. - Enter something like the following text which uses the Hammerspoon hs.eventtap.new API to listen for events.
detectMouseDown = hs.eventtap.new({
hs.eventtap.event.types.otherMouseDown,
hs.eventtap.event.types.leftMouseDown,
hs.eventtap.event.types.rightMouseDown
}, function(e)
local button = e:getProperty(
hs.eventtap.event.properties['mouseEventButtonNumber']
)
print(string.format("Clicked Mouse Button: %i", button))
end)
detectMouseDown:start()
- Save the file.
- Click the Hammerspoon menu icon, select
Console...
and clickReload config
on the console window. - Now, whenever you click anywhere you'll see a log entry in the Hammerspoon Console!
(So far, this works for any type of touchpad click/tap or external mouse click.)
Karabiner-EventViewer is another option that can log the information you are looking for. Although it comes as part of Karabiner-Elements you can use it independently to monitor keystrokes and mouse button presses.
You can examine keyboard and mouse events by using EventViewer. Launch Karabiner-EventViewer from Launchpad.
Input events will be shown when you type keyboard on EventViewer or press pointing buttons on Mouse Area.
--source Karabiner-EventViewer manual
In practice I find it logs keys and clicks made any where whilst it is running.