About
On macOS, the side buttons on third-party mice are largely useless by default, often acting like a crippled middle click that opens new links unexpectedly. Common workarounds, such as binding the buttons to ⌘+[ and ⌘+], still cause menu bar blinks or alert sounds, and keyboard shortcuts can be unpredictable because they go to the entire foreground application rather than the view under your cursor.
SensibleSideButtons makes the side buttons behave like true navigation keys. Back and forward work in practically any application with a history, even without keyboard shortcuts bound, and commands are sent directly to the view under your cursor. The app lives in your menu bar, produces no blinking or noises, and can be selectively enabled or disabled from its app menu. It runs without CPU overhead or polling, sending system-wide events only when M4 or M5 is clicked.
SensibleSideButtons is available as version 1.0.7 for macOS 10.13 and later, and its source is on GitHub.
What's new
All release notesHomebrew cask sensiblesidebuttons 1.0.7 (sha256 fb823f17eeedf367c7af5f969d9a569a6e432440baacdc2de23d26577459e27d).