Button 3 input lost after triggering Button3+Scroll action

Bugs or Unexpected Behavior
1

Describe the bug
I have a trigger set up: Button 3 (back button) + Scroll Up → Control+Tab. Every time this trigger fires, the back button (Button 3) itself stops working afterward and it no longer registers clicks. It only starts working again after I click Button 3 once by itself, which seems to "reset" it. As soon as I use the Button 3 + Scroll Up combo again, Button 3 gets disengaged again. This has been happening consistently for days and is very disruptive since I use this trigger frequently.

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Set up a trigger: Button 3 (back button) + Scroll Up → Control+Tab
  2. Trigger it (hold back button and scroll up)
  3. Try clicking the back button normally. It does nothing (to test, try clicking it on a browser tab)
  4. Click the back button once more. It works again (and for example, your tab will close)

Affected input device (e.g. MacBook Trackpad, Magic Mouse/Trackpad, Touch Bar, etc.):
Mouse with a back button mapped as Button 3

Screenshots

image
image1166×764 52.4 KB

Device information:

Type of Mac: MacBook Pro (Mac15,9)

macOS version: 26.5.1 (Build 25F80)

BetterTouchTool version: 6.521 (build 2026051309)

Additional information (e.g. crash logs, related issues, etc.):
N/A

2

thanks for reporting, this was already fixed in v6.573 a while ago

3

Thank you for the response! Unfortunately, I am still experiencing it after updating to 6.640

4

I was able to reproduce the issue. This happens when you have a Drag Actions type action enabled. When disabling it, the issue does not occur.

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image286×104 4.18 KB

5

drag actions is not a term BTT uses, you might have named it that way. Can you copy & paste that trigger here? (it will copy some json to the clipboard if you select it and press cmd+c)

6

You are correct, my apologies. It is a normal back button action:

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image462×954 59.5 KB

My theory is that this ends up conflicting with the Back button + scroll action

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image482×788 41.7 KB

7

@Andreas_Hegenberg unfortunately I am still experiencing this on the latest version of BetterTouchTool.

I am unable to say the version number due to two bugs, but I updated just now to the latest version. The bugs are as follows:

  1. BetterTouchTool in the dock: you need to click it 2-3 times for the window to show up

  2. Launching BTT via the dock or a launcher: the menu bar doesn't seem to change to BTT, so I'm unable to go to the "About" window

    image
    image1272×224 45.8 KB

  3. [Separate/unrelated] When the BTT window finally opens, it appears at the end of the app switcher unlike a typical window. I reported this first many (probably 5-6 years) ago

I think these above bugs might be related and could be solved together.

The middle mouse button would be amazing to fix. I've thought of double middle mouse button clicking but it's a bit annoying because this will inconsistently open the same thing in a new tab twice, so realisitically I middle mouse button click, wait a bit to see if it worked, and then try again. Sometimes this takes some effort if I can't see the new tab immediately as I need to scroll on my tab list if I'm opening a lot of tabs.

Here's the action itself:

[
  {
    "BTTLastUpdatedAt" : 1785267900.6626029,
    "BTTTriggerType" : 12030,
    "BTTTriggerTypeDescriptionReadOnly" : "Button 3 + Scroll Up",
    "BTTTriggerTypeDescription" : "Scroll up (physical down)",
    "BTTTriggerParentUUID" : "2b4225aa-a935-436b-86a2-0a57720d6616",
    "BTTTriggerClass" : "BTTTriggerTypeNormalMouse",
    "BTTUUID" : "259d85a0-8f6b-4266-806f-ea5b38d7efe3",
    "BTTNotesInsteadOfDescription" : 1,
    "BTTOrder" : 1,
    "BTTActionsToExecute" : [
      {
        "BTTLastUpdatedAt" : 1785267900.6626081,
        "BTTTriggerParentUUID" : "259d85a0-8f6b-4266-806f-ea5b38d7efe3",
        "BTTIsPureAction" : true,
        "BTTUUID" : "2521140f-2172-4485-9759-e7d1ea5c9b7d",
        "BTTPredefinedActionType" : 264,
        "BTTPredefinedActionName" : "",
        "BTTLayoutIndependentActionChar" : "TAB",
        "BTTShortcutToSend" : "59,48",
        "BTTOrder" : 301
      }
    ],
    "BTTGestureNotes" : "Scroll up (physical down)"
  }
]
8

have you tried setting up using scroll up only and then adding currently_pressed_mouse_buttons == "3," in the advanced conditions? :thinking:

9

these two are unfortunately how macOS handles background apps, although this got better with recent macOS versions

10

Thanks, this suggestion fixed it for me. After scrolling now with Button 3 held, middle clicks register normally with no extra solo click needed.

Interestingly, the trailing comma is needed, even though it looks out of place

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image1210×210 22.2 KB

Since this works now, the bug seems specific to the Button 3 + Scroll combo trigger

11

Understood, thanks for the information. I did try working on a menu bar app and I remember it had similar strange behavior, too