Mouse Test

Mouse Test checks every part of a mouse that a browser can see. A drawing of a mouse lights each button while you hold it — left, right, the wheel’s middle click, and the two side buttons (Back and Forward) — and keeps it marked once it has worked. It counts the presses of each button, tallies the wheel’s steps up, down, left and right, and says whether the wheel scrolls in notched lines or smooth pixels. It also catches the most common mouse fault: a worn switch that counts one click as two. Any press that arrives less than 80 milliseconds after the previous press of the same button is flagged, because no person clicks that fast. Finally, moving the mouse in circles gives an estimate of its report (polling) rate — how many times a second it tells the computer where it is.

1. Point at the test area and press each button: left, right, the wheel, and the side buttons if your mouse has them.
2. Scroll the wheel up and down; tilt it, or hold Shift while scrolling, to test sideways scrolling.
3. To check for the double-click fault, click the left button slowly twenty or thirty times, one click at a time, and watch for the warning.
4. Move the mouse in quick circles over the area to read its report rate. Start again clears everything.

• Buttons a mouse maker’s software remaps (to a shortcut, a DPI change or a macro) may reach the browser as something else, or not at all. Test with that software closed, or with the button set to its default.
• The Back and Forward buttons are kept from leaving the page while you are over the test area. A few browser and system combinations still go back; if so, come back and the page starts afresh.
• Report rate is an estimate from the browser’s movement events. It is close for 125–1,000 Hz mice in Chrome and Edge; browsers that pass on fewer events, and very high rates (4,000–8,000 Hz), read low. Nothing in a browser can measure DPI or sensor accuracy.
• A touchpad works too, but its “middle” and side buttons are gestures that may not reach the page as buttons.
• The double-click check looks at the gap between presses; it cannot tell a faulty switch from a very fast deliberate double-click under 80 ms, which is rare.
• Clicks, scrolls and movement are read by this page in your browser and are not recorded or sent. Nothing is stored; reloading the page starts afresh.

The switch under the button wears and starts to “bounce”, sending two clicks for one press. Click slowly here; if the page warns about presses under 80 ms apart, the switch is the cause. Some mouse software has a debounce setting that helps; otherwise the switch or the mouse needs replacing.

Office mice usually report 125 Hz, which is fine for normal work. Gaming mice report 500 or 1,000 Hz, and some up to 8,000 Hz, so the pointer is a little smoother and more current. Most people cannot feel the difference above 1,000 Hz.

Yes. Scroll slowly in one direction and watch the tally: if steps in the other direction appear, the wheel’s encoder is dirty or worn.

A trackpad’s clicks and scrolling count. A pen or a finger is recognised and you are pointed to Touch Test, since this page is about mouse buttons.