22 May 2005 09:10

3-button emulation on an iBook

Google is full of old information, or misinformation, about getting 3-button emulation on an iBook. Here is the real story (for vanilla 2.6.11.10 on Debian, anyhow):

echo 1 > /proc/sys/dev/mac_hid/mouse_button_emulation

Middle click is fn-ctrl, and right click is fn-alt. I wasn't excited about F11/F12, or alt-2/alt-3, but this I think I can get used to. To make it permanent, you want to do this:

echo dev.mac_hid.mouse_button_emulation=1 >> /etc/sysctl.conf

If you don't have that proc file, you probably don't have MAC_EMUMOUSEBTN compiled into your kernel.