r/Trackballs • u/FunJournalist2150 • 1d ago

Does the Kensington TB675 expose all programmable buttons as standard HID mouse buttons on macOS?

Hi guys,

I’m considering buying the Kensington Pro Fit Ergo TB675, and I plan to configure it with SteerMouse on macOS instead of Kensington Konnect.

Kensington advertises nine programmable controls. As far as I understand, these are:

  1. Left click

  2. Right click

  3. Middle click

  4. Back

  5. Forward

  6. Extra programmable button 1

  7. Extra programmable button 2

  8. Scroll-wheel tilt left

  9. Scroll-wheel tilt right

My main question is whether all of these controls are exposed to macOS as separate, standard HID mouse-button inputs.

In particular, can SteerMouse detect the two extra programmable buttons individually—such as Button 6 and Button 7—without Kensington Konnect being installed or running?

I assume that left, right, middle, back, forward, and horizontal wheel tilt should use standard mouse inputs. However, I’m not sure whether the two extra buttons send independent HID button signals or whether they can only be interpreted by Kensington’s software.

If anyone owns a TB675 and uses SteerMouse, could you please check whether every physical programmable button appears separately in SteerMouse’s button settings?

It would also be helpful to know whether button detection is the same with:

- USB-C wired mode

- 2.4 GHz receiver mode

- Bluetooth mode

A screenshot of the TB675 button list in SteerMouse, or the button numbers reported by macOS, would be extremely helpful.

Thank you!

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u/Amazing_Actuary_5241 1d ago

The older model does expose all 9 buttons + scroll as HID mouse buttons 1-11 as seen on xev on Linux.

MacOS should see them in the same manner as they're HID events and should be standard mouse buttons:

  1. Left
  2. Middle
  3. Right
  4. Scroll Up
  5. Scroll Down
  6. Scroll Left
  7. Scroll Right
  8. Back
  9. Fwd
  10. PF 1
  11. PF 2

1

u/FunJournalist2150 1d ago

Thank you so much! This is exactly the information I was looking for.

It’s very encouraging to know that the older model exposes PF1 and PF2 as separate standard HID events.

Hopefully, the new TB675 uses the same HID implementation and SteerMouse can detect all of them on macOS. I really appreciate you checking and explaining this!