quietmouse

Why I built it

Logitech makes great mice, but configuring one means running Logi Options+, which comes with telemetry, an updater, and a lot of background machinery for what should be a few settings. I wanted my buttons and gestures without any of that, on my own Macs and on a locked-down work PC where I don't have admin rights.

quietmouse is one small program for all three desktop platforms. It has no account, no cloud, no updater, and no network access at all. It talks HID++, Logitech's device protocol, directly to the mouse or receiver, and nothing else.

What it does today

• Pointer and scrolling: set DPI or cycle through a list from a button, choose the SmartShift mode and ratchet torque, and reverse the wheel on the device itself, without touching the trackpad.
• Buttons: remap any divertable control to key chords, media keys, clicks, shell commands, DPI changes, or an Easy-Switch channel.
• Gestures: hold a button and swipe in four directions, with a separate action for a plain tap. A swipe has to clear a deadzone in one movement, so pressing the button never fires one by accident.
• Native desktop actions: switching desktops and opening the overview go through each system's own mechanism: registered shortcuts on macOS, Task View on Windows, and KWin on KDE Plasma. Rebind a shortcut and quietmouse follows it.
• Receivers: Unifying, Bolt, Lightspeed, and Nano receivers, plus Bluetooth and USB, including pairing and unpairing devices. Settings come back on their own when a device wakes or reconnects.

For now it's configured with a TOML file, which reports mistakes with the line they're on:

[[device]]
match = "MX Master"
dpi = 1600
smartshift = { mode = "auto", threshold = 20 }
scroll = { invert = true }

[device.buttons.gesture]      # hold and swipe; a press alone is a tap
tap = "overview"              # Mission Control / Task View / Activities
left = "desktop_left"
right = "desktop_right"

[device.buttons.back]
press = { cycle_dpi = [800, 1600, 3200] }

How it's built

• A protocol crate with no OS dependencies. hidpp implements HID++ 1.0 and 2.0 and is tested against scripted devices, so most behaviour is covered without a mouse attached.
• Offline by construction. There is no networking code, and CI fails if a network-capable crate, such as an HTTP client, TLS, or a telemetry SDK, appears in the dependency tree on any platform.
• No admin rights, anywhere. A windowless per-user agent starts at log-in through a LaunchAgent, a systemd user service, or the Windows Startup folder.
• Strict by default. Every compiler and Clippy warning is an error, andunsafe is denied everywhere except four small files that call the operating system directly. CI runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux.
• Packaged properly. Homebrew, a no-admin PowerShell installer, and.deb, .rpm, and Arch packages, all checked against published checksums.

What's next

The command line and background agent came first. The next stage is making all of it approachable without a config file.

1. A native settings app on each platform

   A menu bar app on macOS and a tray app on Windows and Linux, built to feel at home on each system rather than one web view shipped everywhere. It will cover everything the config file does today, including pairing, and talk to the running agent over a local socket or named pipe, never the network, so the offline guarantee still holds.

2. Per-application profiles

   Different buttons and gestures depending on which app is in front, so a thumb button can go back in a browser and do something else entirely in an editor, switching automatically as you move between them.

3. Signed macOS releases

   Developer ID signing and notarisation, so macOS keeps quietmouse's Input Monitoring and Accessibility permissions across upgrades and Gatekeeper stops warning on install.

4. More hardware

   So far it's tested on an MX Master 3S over Bluetooth on macOS and Windows. Receivers and Linux still need testing on real devices. If you have other Logitech hardware, reports are welcome.

Try it

On macOS, or on Linux with Homebrew:

brew install benjweaver/quietmouse/quietmouse

Windows and other Linux installs are in the README. It's free software under the GPL, and it builds on years of protocol documentation from the Solaar and logiops projects.