Comparison
WheelClick vs BetterTouchTool
BetterTouchTool customizes nearly everything, and middle click is one preset among hundreds. It costs $15 for two years of updates or $25 lifetime, after a 45-day trial. WheelClick is built around the middle click and works out of the box: three-finger click and tap on the trackpad are free forever, and the click works alongside macOS’s Three Finger Drag.
macOS understands a middle click everywhere, but Apple’s trackpads and the Magic Mouse have no way to make one, and macOS has never had the autoscroll Windows and Linux users take for granted. Anyone who switches platforms with that muscle memory ends up looking for an app. 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 Trackpad 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 12 (Monterey) 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 | 1.1.10, 17 October 2026 GitHub Releases |
| Distribution | Direct download, Setapp | Mac App Store, direct download, Homebrew Magic Mouse gestures come with the direct download: the App Store sandbox hides the mouse’s touches from every app |
| Maintenance | Active | Active Three releases in September 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 on the trackpad are free forever — no trial needed for those.
More comparisons: vs MiddleDrag · vs Middle · vs MiddleTouch · vs Multitouch · vs MagicPrefs · vs Jitouch · vs MiddleClick · all of them at once