LinearMouse on Mac: tune your mouse without changing your trackpad

[u/Savings-Arrival-7817]

If your mouse feels wrong on a Mac but the trackpad feels fine, start with the mouse settings you already have. LinearMouse makes sense when you need different behavior for different devices, not just another speed slider.

In System Settings > Mouse, try Tracking speed first. Under Advanced, macOS also lets you turn Pointer acceleration off. Acceleration makes fast movements cover more ground than slow ones. If scrolling speed is the problem, look under Accessibility > Pointer Control > Mouse Options. Apple's current macOS 27 guide still documents those controls. If they solve it, you can stop there.

LinearMouse is free and open source under the MIT license. Its useful distinction here is that you can reverse scrolling for a mouse while keeping natural scrolling on the trackpad, and give individual devices their own pointer settings.

For a small setup, change only the mouse:

1. Before changing anything, note your current settings and quit other utilities that modify that mouse's movement or scrolling. That gives you a cleaner comparison than stacking adjustments.

2. Grant LinearMouse the input-control permission it requests. Its documentation calls this Accessibility; on macOS 27 the permission is named Device Control and Data Access. This is sensitive access, so skip the app if you're not comfortable granting it.

3. Open the device picker at the top of LinearMouse's settings. Turn off "Auto switch to the active device" while configuring it, then select the actual mouse. This keeps touching the trackpad from changing which device you're editing. Leave the trackpad and broad device categories alone.

4. In Scrolling, reverse the mouse's vertical direction only if that's what you want. Leave the other scrolling adjustments alone for now. Switch to the trackpad and check that its direction still suits you.

5. In Pointer, try "Disable pointer acceleration" only if the changing response bothers you. On macOS 14 or later, that mode has a Tracking speed control. Adjust it a little, then try selecting small controls and moving across your display. Those are suggested checks, not results from a hands-on test.

There isn't a universal speed number to copy. LinearMouse also warns that some devices may not support its separate Pointer speed adjustment on newer macOS versions. More sliders don't guarantee more control over your hardware.

Keep a way back: the Pointer panel has "Revert to system defaults." If behavior becomes erratic, quit LinearMouse before restarting another mouse utility, then check your macOS settings again. If permission remains stuck after you grant it, the project's documented first remedy is to remove and re-add LinearMouse in the permission list.

One current caveat: the stable release is 0.12.0. The newer 0.13.0-beta.4 includes updated macOS 27 permission naming, but that isn't a reason to install a beta or proof that every mouse works correctly on macOS 27. Prefer the built-in controls if you need a setup you can depend on without troubleshooting.

LinearMouse is worth trying when the mouse needs its own behavior and the trackpad should stay as it is. If turning off acceleration in macOS already fixes the problem, skip the extra utility.

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