Modder tries to fix Apple’s unfixable Magic Mouse

By Caleb Clark March 25, 2022

There’s no way to fix the Magic Mouse, as Matty Benedetto from Unnecessary Inventions recently discovered. The YouTuber has made all kinds of interesting (if impractical) accessories and devices. The amount of creativity on display in his videos is something to behold, but not even he can work around the fatal flaw of Apple’s Magic Mouse.

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For those unfamiliar, the Magic Mouse is Apple’s premier mouse solution for the Mac. It includes a glass top, supports swipe gestures, and has a rechargeable battery. The downside? The Lightning port to charge it is on the bottom of the device. That means users have to flip the mouse to the side and plug it in, making it functionally useless while it’s charging.

Apple says a few minutes on the charger is all you need to get you through the day, but it’s still an annoying — and frankly, dumb — design choice. And it has been a gripe from Apple fans for years, but something the company has refused to change.

Unnecessary Inventions decided to take a crack at solving it. Combining a 3D-printed lift, a pair of metal ball bearings, and a right-angled Lightning connector, they created a working sleeve that would allow the Magic Mouse to move and charge simultaneously.

Except, when the Magic Mouse is plugged into a power source, it loses all other functionality. As Matt told Gizmodo: “The problem they immediately discovered was a simple but baffling one: when the Mighty Mouse 2 is connected to a power source, it stops working. It recharges just fine, but the rest of it just shuts down until the Lightning charging cable is disconnected.”

The Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad work fine when plugged in, but not the Magic Mouse. Apple perhaps knew that no one would be able to use it with the charger on the bottom and installed some sort of shutoff to stop accidental clicks while the mouse charged.

It’s still disappointing, and it seems Apple fans will have to rely on Apple to properly fix the Magic Mouse in the future, or find a better mouse alternative.

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