Rayaki in Cherry Hill, NJ

My first blush with iPadOS’s mouse support left me underwhelmed. Using a Magic Mouse, I was able to click and otherwise emulate a finger, but one absent feature in particular–support for scrolling in apps like Safari–left me uninterested in using a mouse with my iPad.

A little reading, however, led me to discover that mice with scroll wheels–notably Logitech mice–scroll as you might expect. I tried a leftover USB mouse from my son’s computer, and low and behold! Scrolling!

I picked up a Logitech Anywhere MX 2 today and set up the mouse. I must report that in addition to scrolling working, the ability to program each button to complete a number of useful features makes the mouse even more intriguing.

I set up the mouse to support click/tap with button one; button two activates the menu; other buttons will snap a screen shot, open the app switcher, and even summon the dock. This list action blew me away; I had hovered over the bottom of the screen a number of times looking for the Dock to pop up, but this is possibly even more interesting than standard macOS behavior.

One small detail bothered me, however: leaving Assitive Touch turned on when not using the mouse leaves the small menu button, semi-transparent as it is, on the screen at all times. I don’t like that one bit.

But Shortcuts to the rescue! I quickly made two shortcuts: Mouse On and Mouse Off. One turns Assstive Touch on, the other off. I keep these sorted near the top of my shortcuts, and keep Shortcuts pinned to my home screen.

I have started to collect some usage notes on iPadOS for a later post, but I will say that I like having the Files widget pinned to my Today view on the home screen. I used to make smart folders in the Finder with the intention of reviewing them each morning to see where I left off the day before. Files pinned to Today puts it front and center.