Comparison
WheelClick vs BetterTouchTool
Two ways to bring middle click back to macOS — here’s what actually differs.
macOS has never shipped a native way to middle-click, middle-click-drag, or autoscroll the way Windows and Linux users take for granted — anyone who switches platforms and loses that muscle memory ends up searching for a third-party fix. WheelClick and BetterTouchTool are two independent answers to that same gap, built by different developers with different approaches; neither is a copy of the other. Below is an honest, attribute-by-attribute comparison so you can pick the one that fits how you work.
BetterTouchTool is by Andreas Hegenberg (folivora.ai) — its site is here. BetterTouchTool is the category’s kitchen sink and the most-recommended answer in any Mac customization thread: hundreds of bindable triggers and actions across trackpad, Magic Mouse, keyboard and more, with middle click available as one preset among them. It is a genuinely powerful tool with a famously responsive developer.
Side by side
| BetterTouchTool | WheelClick | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $15 (2 years of updates) or $25 lifetime | $4.99 one-time Three-finger click & tap free forever |
| License | Closed source | Closed source |
| Free trial | 45 days | 14 days No account needed |
| Free tier | No Paid, after a 45-day trial | Free tier Three-finger click and tap, permanently — no account, no countdown |
| macOS support | Not documented Its own materials state no minimum; the third-party Homebrew cask requires macOS 12 | macOS 13 (Ventura) and later |
| Input method | Not documented Its internals are not documented | Public Accessibility API (CGEventTap) One exception: Magic Mouse touches, which no public API exposes. Those come from a separate unsandboxed helper, in the direct build only |
| Trackpad | Yes | Yes |
| Magic Mouse | Yes | Yes Paid — touch gestures in the direct build; fn+click everywhere |
| Middle-click-drag | Configurable Via custom gestures | Yes Opt-in Middle-Drag plugin for CAD, plus a configurable modifier-key + click (paid) |
| Autoscroll | A basic auto-scroll action Added in 6.264, announced by its developer on the forum rather than in the release notes | Yes System-wide, opt-in (paid) |
| Swipe gestures | Yes Extensive gesture bindings | Yes Three-finger swipes (paid) |
| Per-app rules | Yes Per-app trigger overrides | Yes Per-app allow and ignore lists (paid) |
| Where bugs go | Community forum community.folivora.ai | Public issue tracker WheelClick-Community on GitHub |
| Last release | 6.745, 21 August 2026 Its own release notes; the download it serves changes more often still | 1.1.4, 26 August 2026 GitHub Releases |
| Distribution | Direct download, Setapp | Mac App Store, direct download, Homebrew The App Store build has no Magic Mouse gestures — the same sandbox limit every App Store app hits |
| Maintenance | Active | Active Five releases in August 2026 |
Cells marked “Not documented” mean BetterTouchTool’s own materials don’t state it either way — we would rather leave a blank than publish a guess about someone else’s app. Every cell was re-verified against BetterTouchTool’s own current materials on 31 August 2026; if something has gone stale since, tell us and it gets fixed. Comparing more than one alternative? See the full comparison — WheelClick and every middle-click app in one table.
Which one fits you
Pick BetterTouchTool if you want one tool to customize everything — window snapping, keyboard triggers, Touch Bar, serial gestures — and middle click is just one line in a much longer wishlist. Nothing else on the Mac matches its breadth.
Pick WheelClick if you want exactly a middle click that works out of the box. BTT’s breadth has a real setup cost, and its own forum carries a long-running run of reports about three-finger gestures colliding with macOS’s Three Finger Drag — it ships a compatibility mode for exactly that. WheelClick resolves the collision instead of managing it, telling a physical click from the drag’s synthesized one by the trackpad’s own pressure, so both work at once.
Either way you end up with a middle click your Mac should arguably have shipped with — see why macOS never did.
Three-finger click and tap are free forever — no trial needed for those.
More comparisons: vs MiddleDrag · vs Middle · vs MiddleTouch · vs Multitouch · vs MiddleClick · all of them at once