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Comment by notJim

12 hours ago

I have a logitech mouse that allows you to unclick the scroll wheel so you can scroll at tremendous speed (the scroll wheel has a bearing). I highly recommend this both because it's surprisingly useful and because it's incredibly satisfying.

The only problem with this scroll wheel is that the clicked mode does not actually guarantee a scroll event per click. There is a disconnect between the mechanical click and the actual event sensor. This is usually a non issue but if you try to use the scroll up/down as a bind in a game (fps jump for instance) it becomes painfully obvious.

Oh and also scroll click isn’t a thing (but there is the middle button to bind)

For normal work I absolutely love the unlocked flywheel scroll and won’t go back

  • Another problem is that applications that try to implement smooth scroll for wheel events will actually drop events or screw up the animation, making the unlocked scroll useless or just as slow as normal.

    • Smooth scrolling for wheel events works fine in Firefox on Linux, speed and all. I have such a momentum wheel Logitech mouse. (I almost always leave the clicks engaged, the wheel can still keep going for quite a distance if flicked hard enough.)

    • Do you have an example application that does that? Used such Mouse a long time on Windows and now on Mac but never experienced that.

The one that uses a semi-permanent magnet for that mechanism? It's the only use I'm aware of a switchable permanent magnet (alnico and rare earth half-cylinders wrapped in a coil; pulsing the coil switches the alnico to be either parallel or anti-parallel with the neodymium, turning the whole assembly on or off) in a commercial product; I bought it just for that.

  • They have multiple that can do this.

    It sounds like you are talking about the style in the MX Master, which is electromagnetic and controlled via software.

    They also have a physical version in the M720. I do not know how the mechanism works, but it is controlled by a mechanical switch on the mouse.

I had a Logitech MX master or sth like that and it had one of those. Too bad it was made like crap. I went through two of them in two years.

I use AHK to bind XB2 (the top side mouse button) + scroll to scroll fast, I agree that it is very useful. I got inspired by VS Code using alt+scroll for fast scroll and wanted that everywhere.

> I have a logitech mouse that allows you to unclick the scroll wheel

Yeah, I've had one for few years now. It was always annoying to accidentally unlock the scroll wheel...

> so you can scroll at tremendous speed (the scroll wheel has a bearing)

...but I never once gave the unlocked scroll wheel a whimsical flick until I read this part.

I learned a thing! It works great. Thanks!

I’ve used G502 mice for a decade now and the scroll wheel is central to how good they are. The MX Master mouse also has this but instead of a mechanical clickclack it has a button that switches an electropermanent magnet or something to enable/disable the free spin mode. It’s witchcraft.