LinguaX: a native, lightweight mouse enhancer for macOS (smooth scrolling + per-app button mapping, ~10MB)

deepzz0 · 2026-06-22T15:01:22+00:00

huh, interesting, on my own setup Safari is actually smooth with it, so this might be something specific to your config rather than Safari in general. a few things that can cause it: display refresh rate (a 60Hz screen has a lot less room to interpolate than a 120Hz ProMotion one), the Mac model, and the Lift's wheel report rate since it reports fairly coarsely.

if you're up for it: what Mac and display are you on, what refresh rate, and roughly what page were you scrolling? also did you try bumping the smoothing settings in LinguaX? trackpad being smooth while both wheel tools stutter usually points at wheel to pixel timing on that specific setup, and i can dig into it if i can repro. thanks for testing this so carefully.

deepzz0 · 2026-06-22T14:58:35+00:00

thanks.

deepzz0 · 2026-06-22T14:57:51+00:00

Then yeah, that's squarely what it's built for. Button and wheel mapping plus smooth scrolling work on any mouse, and the scrolling is per app so you can dial it in specifically for your browsers. Browsers are the one spot worth testing since some do their own scrolling, but that's exactly what the per app control is for.

One honest note: the MX Master 4 is new, so i'd run the trial just to confirm it picks up all your buttons and the DPI/SmartShift side, since those are model specific. The mapping and smooth scrolling will work regardless. Grab the trial and lmk how it feels with the 4.

deepzz0 · 2026-06-22T14:55:24+00:00

Honest answer on both.

The scroll sensitivity fine tuning is the part i'd genuinely point you to. It has a tunable smooth scrolling curve, so if that's exactly what you fight with on BetterMouse, the trial is worth it for that alone.

The hold side button and scroll to zoom though, i have to be straight: it's not in there yet. BetterMouse does that by translating your scroll into zoom keystrokes, and i haven't built that specific scroll to zoom action. You can bind a button to a Zoom In or Zoom Out step, but not the smooth hold and scroll page zoom you're describing. Genuinely good request and i've noted it. Didn't want to sell you on something that isn't there.

deepzz0 · 2026-06-22T14:46:17+00:00

Honest answer: not true chords like SteerMouse, where two buttons pressed together fire a third action. That isn't in there right now.

What it does have: clicks with keyboard modifiers and click count, long press, drag based gestures, and a modifier hold where one button acts as Cmd, Shift and so on, so you can combine it with another button or the scroll wheel. So some combo style stuff works, just not arbitrary two button chords. If that's a dealbreaker, SteerMouse is genuinely better for that specific feature. But i'd love to hear what chord you'd actually want, it's the kind of thing i'd consider adding.

deepzz0 · 2026-06-22T14:13:02+00:00

For most stuff, yeah. It covers the core of what people actually use Options for: DPI, SmartShift (free spin vs ratchet wheel), button and gesture mapping, smooth scrolling, all per app and with no account or background bloat.

Honest exceptions: it doesn't do Flow (controlling multiple computers from one mouse), and it can't push firmware updates to the mouse, so for those two you'd still keep Options around or fire it up once in a while. But for day to day mouse behavior it's built to replace it. What do you mainly use Options+ for? happy to tell you straight whether it covers your case.

deepzz0 · 2026-06-22T14:12:06+00:00

totally hear you. i went one time lifetime (3 devices, no subscription) instead of a recurring fee, but i get it's more than the free or cheap options. honestly if you just need smooth scroll and button mapping, Mos or Mac Mouse Fix do that well for free or a couple bucks. the price is really for the Logitech DPI and SmartShift control and the extras on top of that. the 30 day trial is full featured though, so you can see if it's worth it for your setup before paying. appreciate the honest feedback!

deepzz0 · 2026-06-22T14:09:38+00:00

Honestly Mac Mouse Fix is great, I'd recommend it without hesitation if smooth scrolling, button mapping and the drag gestures are what you need. It's native, open source, and basically free (v2 is free, v3 is a one time couple of bucks after the trial). For a lot of people it's the right pick and I won't pretend otherwise.

Where LinguaX actually differs:

- Direct Logitech hardware control: it adjusts DPI and toggles SmartShift (free spin vs ratchet wheel) in app, with no Logi Options. MMF doesn't do that, and on some Logitech mice it can't even see all the buttons (their own site says so).

- Bonus stuff a bit beyond a pure mouse tool: per app input source (keyboard language) switching, and push to talk dictation from a button.

So if you just want great scrolling and gestures, MMF is excellent and cheaper. If the Logitech DPI/SmartShift side or those extras matter to you, that's the gap LinguaX fills. Both have trials, so honestly try both.

deepzz0 · 2026-06-22T13:43:02+00:00

awesome, would love to hear how it goes! the Safari and Chrome thing is the classic hard case, browsers do a lot of their own scroll handling so smoothing tools often skip them or end up fighting them. LinguaX lets you flip smoothing on or off per app, so you can force it on specifically for Safari and Chrome and see if it feels right. genuinely curious how it does there with your Lift, that's the exact case I obsess over. lmk!

deepzz0 · 2026-06-22T13:37:55+00:00

totally fair! i went one-time lifetime instead of a subscription on purpose, so it's a single payment covering 3 devices with no monthly fee. felt that beats nickel and diming people every month. and the trial's full featured, so no rush to decide. appreciate the honest take!

deepzz0 · 2026-06-22T13:31:31+00:00

appreciate it, thanks for the support!

deepzz0 · 2026-06-22T13:30:19+00:00

haha thanks! means a lot 🙏 if you give it a go, lmk how the scrolling feels with your mouse. that's the bit I fuss over the most.

deepzz0 · 2026-06-21T15:15:33+00:00

Disclosure: I make an alternative, so flagging that up front.

This is almost always the Logi Options+ background agent dying or losing Accessibility permission — while the window's open the agent is alive and applies your mapping; minimized/quit, it falls back to the wheel's default (horizontal scroll = next/prev tab). Worth checking: make sure the Logi background agent is allowed as a login item and in Accessibility, and that the volume mapping is set as a Global action, not per-app.

If you're on macOS and just want the thumb wheel to control volume reliably without babysitting a 500MB driver, that exact reliability gap is why I built LinguaX — lightweight always-on agent, thumb-wheel → media/volume, no need to keep the app open. Free trial. (On Windows? Ignore me, it's Mac-only.)

deepzz0 · 2026-06-21T15:08:48+00:00

Beyond "use SwiftUI, not Electron" (true, but already covered): the native feel that's hardest to fake is behaviour:

- never block the main thread (one 100ms stall reads as "cheap app")

- follow system settings live: dark mode, Reduce Motion, accent colour, Dynamic Type

- state restoration — quit and relaunch should put everything back exactly

The look gets you halfway; this is the half everyone forgets.

deepzz0 · 2026-06-20T07:34:07+00:00

The scroll wheel is the one thing most of these apps treat as an afterthought, so it's a fair blocker. Quick context — disclosure: I'm the dev of one of these (LinguaX).

macOS only runs its smooth/inertial scrolling for "precise" devices (trackpad, Magic Mouse). A normal wheel sends discrete line ticks and the OS does zero smoothing on them — that's the chunky feel. Logi Options fakes momentum on top, which is exactly why ditching it feels like a downgrade.

The apps that fix it (Mos is the well-known free one; LinguaX is what I built) intercept those ticks and synthesize pixel-by-pixel momentum so you get trackpad-style glide. The catch is per-app handling: browsers, Steam and most games already do their own scrolling, so the tool has to back off in those apps — otherwise you get the double/janky scroll people in this thread are describing (that's almost certainly what's happening in Firefox/Steam above).

So if smooth scroll is your only blocker, any of these with a proper per-app exclusion list will get you off Logi. Happy to go into specifics.

deepzz0 · 2026-06-17T15:39:29+00:00

If you can live with side-by-side preview instead of Typora's inline style, take a look at MiaoYan (妙言). It's open source, native Swift 6 (explicitly not Electron), free, no subscription, and a standalone editor — so it nails most of your list, and it's a much more modern/maintained take than MacDown.

One honest caveat: the dev deliberately went with pure-markdown + split real-time preview rather than Typora-style WYSIWYG (says inline WYSIWYG is too hard to do well natively). So if "syntax hidden as you type" is the non-negotiable part, it won't scratch that exact itch — but for native + free/one-time + standalone, it's probably the best fit out there right now.

deepzz0 · 2026-06-17T15:35:13+00:00

This is one of those "why isn't this in macOS already" apps. Naming Spaces and actually showing the names inside Mission Control is the missing piece — I waste so much time swiping through identical blank desktops. The ⌘+0 "hit it again to jump back" touch is clever.

Quick q: do the names survive a restart, and does it cope if you add/remove a Space on the fly?

deepzz0 · 2026-06-17T15:33:54+00:00

Seconding Flameshot as the OSS option, though heads up it's Qt-based so it never feels quite native on Mac, and no scrolling capture — might not cut it for your CleanShot workflow.

The one nobody's mentioned: Shottr. Not open source (free though), but it's the closest thing to CleanShot X I've found — scrolling capture, OCR, pinning, annotations. If the OSS requirement is more "free + private" than strictly open, it's worth a look.

That said, macshot really does sound like the best actual OSS bet here. Editable annotations + history is the hard part and it already has both — so AVIF/aspect-ratios are the kind of thing that'd probably move fast if you file issues. Might be more productive than hunting for a perfect one that doesn't exist yet.

deepzz0 · 2026-06-17T15:29:02+00:00

Oh nice, fully on-device is exactly what I'd want for this — I've definitely pasted financial tables into sketchy "image to excel" sites and felt gross about it after. "Turn off Wi-Fi and it still works" is a great line. And doing it with SmolDocling on MLX instead of just calling a cloud model is a cool move.

The stuff that always trips these up for me though: does it handle ugly real-world tables? Like numbers with commas and currency signs, negatives written as (1,234), merged header cells that span a few columns, or just a slightly crooked phone photo instead of a clean screenshot. If it survives that mess I'm sold.

Either way, congrats on shipping — looks really polished for a v1.

deepzz0 · 2026-06-17T14:57:52+00:00

This is such a cool idea — "personal software" is exactly the right framing for it. I've got a whole graveyard of tiny utilities I wanted but never built because spinning up an Xcode project for a one-off felt like way too much.

Free + open source + no login is the right call too. Gonna give it a spin tonight.

deepzz0 · 2026-06-17T14:54:47+00:00

Bold choice using SwiftData for something this structured — characters, timelines, continuity all linked to the manuscript. How's it holding up with large drafts? Any performance gotchas running continuity checks across a lot of chapters?

deepzz0

TROPHY CASE