How To: Get your mouse’s right-click back in OS X 10.7.5
Let’s file this tip under the “things that may only help one other person in the world” category, like my “HOW TO FIX “THE DISC CAN’T BE BURNED, BECAUSE THE DEVICE FAILED TO CALIBRATE THE LASER POWER LEVEL FOR THIS MEDIA” ERROR” article (which actually appears to have helped quite a few of you). Today’s problem is as follows:
After doing a CLEAN install of OS X 10.7.5, you find that your mouse no longer can perform a right click. The Mouse setting in the System prefs is no help, and even swapping out other working mice doesn’t seem to fix it (although some users report that some HP mice are unaffected, Apple’s Mighty Mouse is particularly susceptible to this problem).
Unfortunately we too were hit with this problem at Macenstein Labs when we replaced some Mac Pro hard drives with SSD’s and needed to perform a clean install of OS X (from a USB thumb drive installer we made). Well, after reading 9 pages of posts from people complaining about this problem on the Apple support boards, it turns out the solution comes from a German Apple user named Till von Reumont who was able to get a straight answer from German Apple Support:
“With fresh installs of 10.7.5 the problem is that two files are missing that are needed for the mouse. In my case I could get them from another computer I own that ran Lion and did have the files. To get to the files you need do this:
Go to
/System/Library/LoginPlugins/BezelServices.loginPlugincontrol-click that file and choose “show contents”
now in the finder window navigate to
Contents/PlugIns/In this folder should be two files named
AppleBluetoothHIDMouse.plist
and
AppleHIDMouse.plistIf you don’t find these files, you need to get them and put them in.”
Well, sure enough, our install WAS missing those two files, and sure enough we found them on another Mac in the lab, and we are now right-clicking like fiends! After living with the problem for over a month, it is indescribably refreshing to once again be able to right click on things again. Sorry we can’t post those missing files here, but hopefully you have another Mac-using friend out there you can snag them from. Good luck!
Holy Crap! This happened to two of our macs….We thought we were just screwed. Thank you. One person has been helped!
My right-click and control-click don’t work, so I can’t open the contents of the file you mentioned. Am I permanently screwed? Although my right click works everywhere except in the Finder so I’m wondering if this is the same problem?
i too am having a similar problem but like Javad i cannot right click to give me the show contents option. i am running 10.6.8 and my right click issue is on folders only in finder windows. the right click works on the desktop items, both files and folders, and it works on files in a finder window but not on folders. any other solutions?
Jamie/Javad
You can ctrl and click and that should work. Can anyone email me the two missing files please?
Did anyone email you those two files?
I’m in the middle of work and right mouse click stopped working, I’m using 10.6.8, any help ?
Hello,
Can anyone send me this 2 files please :
AppleBluetoothHIDMouse.plist and AppleHIDMouse.plist
My email address : cengizy@outlook.com
Thanks very much.
I am missing these files as well. I have another Mac, but it’s running Yosemite, so how can I find the files I need for 10.7.5?
Same problem with me untill 3 mins ago….had major magic mouse problems after 10.7.5 update (no right click, not moving folders or showing the dock) turns out i didnt check my software updater, was a bluetooth update sitting there, now it works fine, was soooo close to getting ML ;P ..sorry Lion..my bad
hope this helps someone
I have these files, but my bluetooth mouse is not right-clicking. No software updates.
I also have these files two files and right click is no longer working. It would be great to understand why my Mighty Mouse has stopped being fully operational. Right click is important. Apple any clues?
This helped me heaps! Thanks
I have these files as well….right click was working then stopped for no apparent reason. Setting preferences has it set as secondary button still. Very frustrating
Awesomeness is so true! Had this problem with a clean flash drive install of 10.7.5 onto a Late 2006 iMac. Hardwired Mighty Mouse happily worked over on the Snow Leopard partition of this machine, but not this clean Lion install, no matter what i did to the settings. Happened to have the needed files from an older Lion gradually-updated-to-10.7.5 volume on a utility external hard drive, copied them over, restarted the iMac, and BLAM!—everything works.
Thank You for saving me hours of wheel spinning!
Note: I did a Finder copy, which asked for an admin login. It worked, but the file owner was this admin name, not root. Not being a security expert (not knowing whether it matters or not), i changed the owner (in Terminal) to root for these two files, matching all the other files already existing in this folder.
As this appears to be a common issue after a clean install and OS upgrade why doesn’t Apple make these two files available?
Unfortunately Apple have a very unfriendly attitude behind the friendly and glossy facade they’ve built. All too often OS X upgrades cause previous versions of software and drivers to no longer work. They don’t offer advice, information or anything else. They just expect you to buy a new mouse, or printer or a new piece of software, like money isn’t an issue, which to them I suppose it’s not! It’s why someone I know has sold his macbook pro, iphone, ipad and ipod and gone to Windows and Android. His view was he was sick of being told what he can and can’t do by Apple.
Wow – great fix. I was able to grab these files from a second partition OS running Leopard and put them into OS Lion. Boom, fixed it!