Mouse Test

What gets checked

Left, right, and middle buttons, the two side buttons if your mouse has them, scroll up, scroll down, and cursor movement. Eight checks, each one lighting up the moment the browser sees the corresponding event.

Side buttons only appear on mice that have them, and a browser can only see them if they are mapped to the standard back and forward buttons rather than to a macro in the mouse software. A side button that does nothing here but works elsewhere is bound to something custom, not broken.

Movement tracking reports your cursor position and the size of each movement step. Large jumps between reported positions where you moved smoothly point at a dirty sensor or an unsuitable surface.

Why there is no score here

This page tells you whether your hardware works. That is a yes or a no, and a percentile would add nothing: everyone with a working mouse passes every check.

If you want a number to rank, the click speed and double click tests measure something that actually varies between people.

Reading a failure

A button that never registers is either dead, unmapped, or bound to a macro in the mouse driver. Test on a different computer to tell those apart: a button that also fails there is dead.

A button that registers intermittently is a worn switch. This is the same fault as chatter, in its earlier stage, and it will get worse.

A scroll wheel that jumps backwards while scrolling forwards has a failing encoder. It is a common and specific failure, and it is not a driver problem.

Cursor stutter is usually the surface or the sensor rather than the mouse. Glass, gloss, and very dark surfaces defeat optical sensors. Try a sheet of paper before concluding anything.

The order to diagnose in

Test a second mouse on the same computer. If the fault follows the mouse, the hardware is at fault and nothing on the computer will fix it. If it stays with the computer, the mouse is fine.

Test the same mouse on a second computer. This separates a driver or configuration problem from a physical one more definitively than any single-machine test can.

Change the port or the cable. Intermittent disconnects and cursor freezes are far more often a cable or a hub than a sensor. Wireless mice add battery level and 2.4 GHz congestion to the same list.

Only after those three should you suspect the operating system. Reinstalling a driver is the step most people try first and the one that least often helps.