What this mouse test checks
- All five standard buttons: left, middle (wheel click), right, and the back/forward side buttons, with live held state and press counts.
- Double-click health: intentional double-clicks with the gap in milliseconds — and, via the press counters, accidental doubles from a bouncing switch.
- Scroll wheel delivery: up/down wheel events as a quick check, with the full scroll wheel workbench one click away for serious diagnosis.
- Polling rate estimate: a two-second movement capture that estimates position updates per second from coalesced pointer events.
Reading the results
A healthy button lights exactly while held and its count rises by one per press. The classic failure signatures: a count that occasionally jumps by two (switch bounce — the cause of accidental double-clicks and dropped drags), a button that needs a hard press to register (worn contact), and a button that registers but releases mid-drag (bounce on the release edge).
For the polling estimate, move the mouse in fast, continuous circles. Wired gaming mice typically show several hundred Hz to ~1000 Hz; office and Bluetooth mice commonly show around 90–125 Hz. Browser coalescing means the true rate is at least what is reported.
Common fixes
Double-click on single click
Confirmed switch bounce is mechanical. Short-term: increase the double-click speed threshold in OS mouse settings. Long-term: replace the switch (soldering) or the mouse; some vendors offer debounce settings in their software.
Middle click unreliable
The wheel-click switch wears faster than the wheel encoder. If middle click fails while scrolling still works, the switch is at fault — remapping middle click to a side button is a practical workaround.
Side buttons dead in games
Check the vendor utility first: many ship with side buttons bound to non-standard actions. In-browser they must be mapped to back/forward to register at all.
Cursor stutters or jumps
Test on a different surface and port, clean the sensor window, and avoid USB 3.0 hub interference for wireless receivers. A polling estimate far below spec on a gaming mouse can also indicate a saturated wireless link.
Suspect the scroll wheel specifically? The scroll wheel troubleshooting guide covers reversals, skips, and free-spin quirks step by step. And if your clicks feel slow rather than broken, measure them with the CPS test.
Mouse test questions
Click inside the button tester panel with each button — left, right, middle (wheel click), and the side back/forward buttons. Each button card lights up while held and counts presses. A button that does not light up is not reaching the browser; a count that jumps by two on one press indicates a worn switch double-clicking.
Accidental double-clicking is almost always a worn or dirty micro-switch whose contacts bounce. Watch the left-button press count while single-clicking slowly: if it rises by two, the switch is bouncing. Fixes range from raising the OS double-click threshold (a workaround) to replacing the switch or the mouse.
Polling rate is how often the mouse reports its position, commonly 125, 500, or 1000 Hz. Browsers coalesce pointer events, so this tool reads coalesced event timestamps and reports a lower-bound estimate — good for telling 125 Hz from 1000 Hz, but not a substitute for vendor software readings.
Not necessarily. Browsers only see side buttons that the OS or mouse driver maps to standard back/forward actions. Buttons remapped in vendor software (to macros, DPI shift, media keys) never reach the page. Check the vendor utility to see the current assignment before suspecting hardware.
The panel on this page counts wheel-up and wheel-down events as a quick sanity check. For real diagnostics — direction reversals, missed input gaps, timing bursts, and repeatability across runs — use the dedicated scroll wheel test on the ScrollTest homepage, which records the full event trace.