How To Use Middle Mouse Button/Mouse Button 3 With The Microsoft Touch Mouse

One of the greatest design flaws of the Microsoft touch mouse is the obvious lack of. A middle mouse button. Of course this stylish mouse was never meant to be a gaming mouse, but that's no excuse to leave out such an essential design piece when it comes to computer mice.

I personally abuse the middle mouse button while browsing, mainly to open new tabs or close existing ones (noob tip: clicking with middle mouse button on any link in most browsers will open up the link in a new tab, clicking on the tab itself with the middle mouse button closes said tab).

The lack of a middle mouse button here severely cut down on my productivity (or lack of) until I found the simple solution. Using the Microsoft keyboard and mouse program/driver that installs when you connect the mouse you can reassign specific gestures to act as a makeshift middle mouse button.

I personally have set "swipe up with two fingers" to act as my middle mouse button, but to each his own. To change the gesture settings simply open the keyboard and mouse center, then under "gesture Settings" select the gesture you'd like to set as the middle mouse click, then simply accept and exit.

(It's possible some of these gesture options are only accessible through the new Windows 8 Mouse manager client :/ )