macOS with Magic Mouse

[jody.whitlock]

So running macOS Sierra (10.12.6) on an iMac with a Magic Mouse (first version) and for the life of me I can't figure out how to get navigation to work.  I'm coming from a Windows 10 system where I run Fusion360 because of this navigation issue, but I'm hoping I can solve this so that I can use Fusion360 on whichever device I want.

I've seen a ton of posts that are similar but recommend some third party tool that hasn't been supported in a couple of years and the API it references is depreciated, so that's not a viable option.

Is there anyway to have a key modifier to allow for a Mac mouse of any kind to work as a navigation for pan and orbit?  I don't think it would be all that difficult since Windows has the Shift+Middle Mouse for orbit, and Middle Mouse for pan.  Maybe Option+Mouse click for pan and Control+Mouse click for orbit?  I don't see those being used for anything else.

[masa.minohara · Accepted solution]

Hi @jody.whitlock,

Welcome to the Fusion 360 community and thank you for posting! The development is working on this right now and I'm not aware of a way to achieve that at this moment unfortunately. (the ticket ID is FUS-36146 just for your reference)

For now, I recommend:

1. Use a mouse with three buttons (including a wheel)

2. Use the navigation bar at the bottom

I apologize for the inconvenience.

[Anonymous]

I have the same issue.  The pretty good solution I found is to download an app called Better Touch Tool (BTT).  You can enable middle click functionality in many ways.  The two that feel perfectly normal in Fusion 360 are:

1)  2 Finger Click = Assigned Action Middle Click

2)  1 Finger Middle Click = Middle Click

(I enabled both in global mode in case there are other applications that might benefit.)

With #2, you'll find the middle click area of Magic Mouse 2 is hard to find.  However, BTT gives you a Live View tool to allow you to see the touch mapping of Magic Mouse.  To my great surprise, I was able to locate the middle click area and place a small circular decal on my mouse about the size of a Mighty Mouse middle button.  Magic Mouse actually reads my fingers on top of the decal, so I have effectively created a physical middle button on my mouse.  Now, working in Fusion 360 feels identical to using my Mighty Mouse.

To my knowledge, the application MagicPrefs is no longer supported.  And no one has previously mentioned the decal solution, so I help this helps.  I spent at least 2 hours searching for a solution like this.

[jody.whitlock]

So I did find that switching the Pan, Zoom, Orbit Shortcuts to Inventor. This allows the use of F2, F3, and F4 plus left-click. What I’ve found is:

Left-Click + F2 = Pan
Left-Click + F3 = Zoom
Left-Click + F4 = Orbit

This meets my needs as I was hoping for a keyboard modifier in order to make up for the lack of a middle mouse button.

[Anonymous]

Hi, I had the same problem with Better Touch Tool but I went to Magic Prefs page & there's a download that worked.

Here's the link http://magicprefs.com/MagicPrefs.app.zip.

Hope this helped.

[alexeyZR9PG]

Sorry, but this is temporary fix, not a solution. Solution - is update for Fusion 360 with Apple Magic mouse support! 

[Anonymous]

Good for the solution

have some "shortcut" key to make faster and better modeling 3d

more relevant are "pan" and "orbit"

[paolo.protti]

Hi @Anonymous 

thank you so much!

This is a good solution, the double finger click makes the difference!

The middle button is really unpredictable even with some tape to help centering your finger.

The 2 finger click need some exercise, but after a while it is consistent.

1. lift at least one fingers from the magic mouse
2. lay both finger one on left and one the right side without clicking
3. click left or right leaving the other finger touching the mouse

To repeat start from point 1

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the BetterTouchTool suggestion. That really works good.

[ivanUB2T4]

Thank you so much... this is a perfect solution

[itsmepokono]

Just let us assign shortcuts for pan and orbit. That's as easy as that.

On MacOS mouse middle click should not be the only shortcut available.

[jody.whitlock]

F2, F3, F4 and Left click

[itsmepokono]

Now, say that again imagining the touch bar and you holding fn key.

[Anonymous]

If you have a MacBook with a touchbar, you can set the touchbar to display function keys for specific programs. (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207240)

Also, the trackpad allows most of the functionality; dragging with 2 fingers pans, shift+2 finger drag orbits, either pinch or command-2 finger drag will zoom in/out and double-tap with 2 fingers goes to the home view.

The main downside I’ve found is that the pinch to zoom feature is very sensitive to extraneous touches so if the palm of my left hand happens to touch a corner of the trackpad while I’m touching with my right hand it will start zooming. (The MacBook Pro is typically very good at rejecting extraneous touches to the trackpad, so I’m not sure why this is an issue with Fusion 360 and not with other programs.)

[rxhanson]

Middle is another 3rd party app that can be used specifically to add middle click functionality to Apple trackpads and Magic Mouse. It is not free but it is currently cheaper than a license of BetterTouchTool. Disclaimer: I am the developer, but I've spent a decent amount of time making sure that it works smoothly with Fusion 360. Similar to BetterTouchTool, you can set Middle to perform a middle click using gestures. Additionally, you can set it to middle click when you hold the fn key and click. The Magic Mouse gestures are one finger click in the center, two finger click, three finger click, three finger tap. The trackpad gestures are three finger click, three finger tap, and one finger force touch. Obviously, the fn key click and the click gestures are the useful ones in Fusion 360.

Being the developer, I can tell you that the mentioned "deprecated API" that third party apps use is Apple's private Multitouch framework, and any app that listens to touch data on the Magic Mouse uses this private framework - BetterTouchTool included. If at some point Apple decides to remove access to this private framework in a future macOS release, at least the trackpad gestures and the fn key support in Middle would still work. Apple still allows access to the private framework, though, and it's been that way for close to 10 years now. 

[Anonymous]

Since this posted solution is 3 years old now... is Autodesk still working on Apple Magic Mouse support?

Without it, Fusion 360 is a lot slower to work quickly in on a Mac when doing industrial design.

[Anonymous]

Thank! Your application works great!

[mazinaSVFNT]

I cannot believe that this issue has not been addressed.  It handicaps an entire platform, has multiple obvious solutions and would be trivial to fix.  At the bare minimum, a company with the resources of Autodesk should at least be able to add configurable key bindings.  This is really low-hanging fruit that you guys should have harvested by now.

[mcoronaBZJKY]

I can't believe it still hasn't been address. Man I would love it if I could just use the touch interface to pan around.

[nicholascallen]

Three and half years and counting. The support ticket system is now behind a paywall and Masa is listed as an alumnus. The third party solution Magic Prefs was depreciated back when macOS was still named after cats. Here I am, still clicking on that cube with my Magic Mouse. What are the odds that Autodesk cares anymore? [cricket emoji]