A free app makes Microsoft’s Surface Mouse buzz on a Mac and adds a shortcut ring

Microsoft’s mouse has eight little ways to buzz, and a Mac normally hears from none of them. AL Najafi’s iXpat reaches the haptic controller already inside the Surface Mouse and lets desktop events trigger it. The missing sensation had an unusually small software-shaped hole.

The free MIT-licensed project uses the mouse’s standard HID haptic interface. On macOS, user-space IOKit reads its waveform table and sends playback commands. The project describes the approach as “no kernel extension,” which is a welcome phrase when the goal is making a mouse tick rather than making your computer an experimental operating-system project.

Those eight waveforms can be played at five strengths. A click can have one feel, a highlighted menu item another, and a selected word another again. The software assigns events to the hardware’s existing effects; it doesn’t promise that a software setting installs a new motor in your mouse (accessory makers, behave).

The Action Ring puts up to eight editable chambers around the pointer. Move into a chamber and you get a detent; release to run its action. That makes the menu a shortcut list your hand can follow without traveling to a toolbar. Each app can have its own ring, so a useful set of actions doesn’t have to follow you into programs where they make no sense.

The action button needs a little translation before it can get there. The README explains that its firmware sends Windows keyboard shortcuts for the gestures. iXpat intercepts them, hides them from the foreground app, and assigns press, double-press or hold to your chosen action. On a Mac, that can mean Mission Control or Spotlight. A button whose native language is Windows gets to branch out.

Scrolling gets its own treatment. A slow notch settles at the chosen distance; a fast flick gains momentum. The dynamic ratchet firms up at lower speeds, lightens when moving quickly, and can go silent in free-spin. The faster flick lets a long page coast, sparing your finger some repetitive exercise.

Settings are aimed at this mouse rather than treating every pointing device as collateral damage. The project says the trackpad keeps its system values. Per-app profiles can override the haptics, gestures and scrolling, while unspecified choices inherit the main settings. That matters if a lively desktop feel becomes thoroughly irritating in an editor after the first ten minutes.

The project’s Windows build is a signed tray application with x64 and ARM64 downloads, rather than a driver or a background service. The Mac download requires macOS 14 or newer. The maker reports Apple silicon testing and includes an Intel build without claiming it has been tested.

People shopping specifically for the supported hardware can find the Microsoft Surface Mouse (2nd Edition). Owners should check their model first. A family name on the packaging doesn’t conjure up the haptic controller that older relatives never had.

More peripherals exposing useful standard interfaces could make this sort of independent customization easier to repeat. For now, the unresolved compatibility item is unusually plain: somebody still needs to put that Intel Mac build through its paces.

At least the mouse has feedback.