Comparison
WheelClick vs MagicPrefs
MagicPrefs is a gesture app for the Magic Mouse and trackpad, rewritten in 2026 for macOS 15 and later: £26 for two years or £62 lifetime, after a 7-day trial. WheelClick is built around the middle click, runs from macOS 12, keeps three-finger click and tap on the trackpad free forever, and costs $4.99 once.
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 MagicPrefs 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.
MagicPrefs is by Vlad Alexa — its site is here. MagicPrefs is the long-running gesture app for the Magic Mouse and trackpad, free from 2009 until its developer rewrote it in Swift and relaunched it as a paid app in January 2026. To keep the rewrite simple, he removed per-app presets and scrolling settings, with scrolling planned to return.
Side by side
| MagicPrefs | WheelClick | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | £26 for 2 years, or £62 lifetime The 2-year license covers one Mac; lifetime adds a second | $4.99 one-time Trackpad three-finger click & tap free forever |
| License | Closed source The 2.4 code the rewrite replaced is Apache-2.0 on GitHub; the rewrite’s own is not published | Closed source |
| Free trial | 7 days | 14 days No account needed |
| Free tier | No Paid, after a 7-day trial; it was free until the 2026 rewrite | Free tier Three-finger click and tap, permanently — no account, no countdown |
| macOS support | macOS 15 (Sequoia) and later | macOS 12 (Monterey) and later |
| Input method | Not documented Its page says only “direct integration with the macOS touch framework” | 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 | Not documented The rewrite lists two-, three- and four-finger taps, but not whether one can be a middle click; before it, middle click was one of its bindings | Yes |
| Magic Mouse | Not documented Supports the Magic Mouse, and 2.6.4 added a “One Finger Middle Axis Click” that it does not describe | Yes Paid — touch gestures in the direct build; fn+click everywhere |
| Middle-click-drag | Not documented | Yes Opt-in Middle-Drag plugin for CAD, plus a configurable modifier-key + click (paid) |
| Autoscroll | Not documented Its scrolling settings were removed in the rewrite, with a return planned | Yes System-wide, opt-in (paid) |
| Swipe gestures | Yes Two-, three- and four-finger swipes, plus recorded custom gestures | Yes Three-finger swipes (paid) |
| Per-app rules | No Removed in the 2026 rewrite, “to keep complexity down” | Yes Per-app allow and ignore lists (paid) |
| Where bugs go | Email Support tickets by email; no public tracker | Public issue tracker WheelClick-Community on GitHub |
| Last release | 2.6.5, 23 February 2026 Its own changelog | 1.1.10, 17 October 2026 GitHub Releases |
| Distribution | Direct download | 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 Rewritten and relaunched in January 2026; six releases since | Active Three releases in September 2026 |
Cells marked “Not documented” mean MagicPrefs’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 MagicPrefs’s own current materials on 4 October 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 MagicPrefs if you used MagicPrefs for years and want its gestures back as you remember them, from the same developer: swipes, multi-finger taps and recorded custom gestures, on a Mac running macOS 15 or later.
Pick WheelClick if the middle click is what you came for. WheelClick is built around it, runs from macOS 12, keeps three-finger click and tap free forever, and adds autoscroll, Middle-Drag and per-app rules, which MagicPrefs removed in its rewrite, for $4.99 once instead of £26 for two years.
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 BetterTouchTool · vs Jitouch · vs MiddleClick · all of them at once