Improved 3rd party Mouse Support?

[tong_si_nan_pei]

Can someone on iPadOS 26 Beta confirm if they have improved 3rd party mouse support in iPadOS 26? Specifically, use of additional buttons for back/forward/home screen etc. Also, better scrolling etc.

My MX Master 3 feels useless on the iPad. I am very close to buying a Magic Mouse, even though I hate the shape.

 

[richpjr]

Same boat as you. I love my MX Master 3 and loathe the Magic Mouse and sorely miss the additional buttons.

 

[xxFoxtail]

Assistive touch settings have always been there for my MX Master 2S mouse. I can’t really say if scrolling is any better or not though.

Edit: I rarely use the mouse, mostly use the trackpad.

 

[tong_si_nan_pei]

Assistive touch settings have always been there for my MX Master 2S mouse. I can’t really say if scrolling is any better or not though.

I see. Had no idea such a thing existed. Will try it out. Thanks.

 

[xxFoxtail]

I see. Had no idea such a thing existed. Will try it out. Thanks.

Yeah, it's a bit buried in the settings.

Settings > Accessibility > (Physical & Motor) Touch > AssistiveTouch > (Turn this on) > Devices > Select your device and customize the buttons.

There seems to be no way of changing the left-most thumb button for me, and it seems to default as a tab button. And I’m not sure if this is a bug, but every time I click or tap into a text field, the on screen keyboard will always come up even though my Magic Keyboard is connected, and the setting is off.

 

[tong_si_nan_pei]

Yeah, it's a bit buried in the settings.

Settings > Accessibility > (Physical & Motor) Touch > AssistiveTouch > (Turn this on) > Devices > Select your device and customize the buttons.

There seems to be no way of changing the left-most thumb button for me, and it seems to default as a tab button. And I’m not sure if this is a bug, but every time I click or tap into a text field, the on screen keyboard will always come up even though my Magic Keyboard is connected, and the setting is off.

I tested it today and I couldn’t find a way to set the thumb buttons as “back” or “forward” for navigation, especially in Safari.

 

[richpjr]

I tested it today and I couldn’t find a way to set the thumb buttons as “back” or “forward” for navigation, especially in Safari.

I really wish someone could figure out how to do this.

 

[SnowCrocodile]

Turning on Assistive Touch changes the mouse cursor back to the old circle and also permanently shows the Assistive Touch icon on the screen, hovering above everything else.

I also couldn't find ways to make forward and back browser buttons to work, and it completely ignores the thumb button.

Frankly, seems like more trouble than it's worth.

 

[richpjr]

Turning on Assistive Touch changes the mouse cursor back to the old circle and also permanently shows the Assistive Touch icon on the screen, hovering above everything else.

I also couldn't find ways to make forward and back browser buttons to work, and it completely ignores the thumb button.

Frankly, seems like more trouble than it's worth.

Agree. I tried it and quickly turned it off. Getting full mouse support would be much nicer than having to use keyboard shortcuts to go forward and back in the browser.

 

[HiVolt]

Bumping this, as I've just gotten myself and iPad Air M3, and I remember seeing from the various video reviews of iPadOS 26 that the mouse support is vastly improved. But I paired my MX Anywhere 2, and yes the basic arrow pointer appears but I cannot use it for anything except clicking, no way to scroll or do absolutely anything else without enabling Assistive Touch which is ridiculous like others point out reverts to the stupid circle pointer.

Also when I have my MX Anywhere 2 connected, I cannot even type in any of the text fields as no keyboard pops up.

Does iOS26 only reserve the "proper" cursor operation with the super expensive Apple Magic keyboard?

 

[tong_si_nan_pei]

I gave up and bought a Mac mini. I cant pretend anymore that the iPad is a real computer. I will relegate the $2000 device to read magazines and watch videos.

 

[richpjr]

Bumping this, as I've just gotten myself and iPad Air M3, and I remember seeing from the various video reviews of iPadOS 26 that the mouse support is vastly improved. But I paired my MX Anywhere 2, and yes the basic arrow pointer appears but I cannot use it for anything except clicking, no way to scroll or do absolutely anything else without enabling Assistive Touch which is ridiculous like others point out reverts to the stupid circle pointer.

Also when I have my MX Anywhere 2 connected, I cannot even type in any of the text fields as no keyboard pops up.

Does iOS26 only reserve the "proper" cursor operation with the super expensive Apple Magic keyboard?

You can't scroll? I have used an MX Master 3S and 4 with my iPad and scrolling works as expected. Having the forward and back side buttons is the unsupported thing that annoys me and forces me to use keyboard shortcuts.

 

[tong_si_nan_pei]

You can't scroll? I have used an MX Master 3S and 4 with my iPad and scrolling works as expected. Having the forward and back side buttons is the unsupported thing that annoys me and forces me to use keyboard shortcuts.

Scrolling doesn’t work at least as per my expectations on my MX Master 3S. On web pages, the scrolling starts extremely slowly and then suddenly speeds up. When scrolling towards the top of the page, this also causes the page to refresh (by mimicking the pulling down action) and as a blogger who uses Wordpress, I have lost much work from this.

 

[HiVolt]

I just find it ridiculous that you need to enable assistive touch stuff to enable simple mouse support, reverting to the stupid touch point circle, and not having support for simple things like scrolling a mouse wheel, and having to manually assign buttons like they don't have industry standard default functions on every other platform.

 

[HiVolt]

Ok, I just hooked it up to my desktop Dell 49” via USB-C, into which I have hooked up a Logitech G613 keyboard and MX Master 2S mouse via their USB dongles, and I’m actually surprised that the iPad supports the native resolution of 5120x1440, but it passes the USB devices to the iPad and the mouse and keyboard actually work ok, with the normal pointer button, and scrolling of the mouse works fine too.

So just by Bluetooth it does not work well with 3rd party mice out of the box? Or maybe I also need to pair a keyboard as well. I might try this later.

I’m currrently using it with the extend desktop mode, and I’m figuring out how the windowing and resizing works, It’s somewhat usable. I just wish that there was a way to reduce the size of all the UI elements, because they are huge, taking up a lot of space.

 

[HiVolt]

Well this just gets more bizarre. So I paired up an older Apple BT keyboard, and that works fine. But I connect the MX Anywhere 2 mouse via BT or USB dongle to the iPad, and it just will not register clicks on things like icons or inside apps. But I can click and hold the edge of the apps to resize them!

So it does seem like maybe some mice are just not supported without enabling the old touch accomodations and setting up the buttons, but it will not scroll that way either.

Edit: Hah, I just dug up an old Apple Mighty BT Mouse, the one with the little nipple scroller, and lo and behold it works correctly! I actually liked these mice back in the day.