How to test your mouse
Click inside the test box with every button in turn — left, right, the wheel pressed down as a middle click, and the two side buttons if your mouse has them. Each one lights up on the diagram as it registers. Then scroll the wheel both ways and watch the step counters climb.
Right-click and middle-click are captured inside the box, so no context menu opens and middle-click won't trigger autoscroll or paste. Everything outside the box behaves normally.
How do I know if my mouse is double-clicking on its own?
Watch the gap between clicks figure. A deliberate double-click leaves a gap of roughly 100–300 ms. A worn switch bounces electrically and fires a second press within a few milliseconds of the first, so any gap under 80 ms that you did not intend is flagged as chatter. One flagged event is noise; a handful during normal single clicks means the switch is failing.
This is the most common way a mouse dies. The symptoms are unmistakable once you know them: files open when you meant to select them, drags turn into duplicates, and text selection jumps to whole words. It is a mechanical failure inside the switch — a metal leaf that has lost tension — and it gets worse, never better.
| Symptom in this test | What it means | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| A button never registers | Dead switch, or a broken internal ribbon | Replace the mouse; switch swaps need soldering |
| Chatter warnings on single clicks | Worn switch bouncing | Replace; some brands honour this under warranty |
| Wheel counts up when you scroll down | Failing rotary encoder | Replace; cleaning rarely helps |
| Wheel skips or counts nothing | Dust in the encoder, or a worn wheel | Compressed air first, then replace |
| Side buttons do nothing | Often software — they may need vendor drivers | Install the maker's utility, then retest |
| Cursor position jumps around | Dirty sensor, or an unsuitable surface | Clean the lens; use an opaque, matte mat |
Try this before replacing the mouse
- Try a different USB port, and on a desktop use a rear port directly on the motherboard rather than a hub or front panel.
- For a wireless mouse, change the battery. Nearly every “my mouse is dying” case with erratic clicks and stutter is a low battery.
- Test on another computer. If the fault follows the mouse it is hardware; if it doesn't, it is a driver or a USB problem.
- Blow compressed air into the wheel slot and around the button seams — grit under a switch mimics a dead button.
- Uninstall vendor software temporarily. Aggressive macro utilities can swallow button events entirely.
Why can't this test measure my mouse's DPI?
Because browsers only report how far the pointer moved in CSS pixels, after the operating system has applied its own pointer speed, acceleration and display scaling. There is no way to separate the sensor's true counts-per-inch from those layers, so any web page claiming to measure DPI is estimating. Read the DPI from your mouse's own utility instead.
The same limit applies to polling rate. What this test can tell you reliably is whether every button and the wheel work, and whether the switches chatter — which is what actually fails.
Testing a laptop trackpad
A trackpad reports as a mouse, so tap and click inside the box to check its left and right zones, and two-finger scroll to exercise the wheel counters. What won't appear here are gestures — pinch, three-finger swipe and similar are handled by the operating system and never reach the page. For the rest of a laptop's inputs, run the keyboard tester, and if the screen is touch-capable, the touch screen test.
Replacing a mouse for a desk setup? Pair it well — our guide to the best mechanical keyboards for typing covers the other half of the desk, and the best gaming laptops guide notes which models have trackpads worth using.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my side button navigate back instead of registering?
Browsers map the side buttons to back and forward at a level the page cannot always override. This test asks the browser to suppress that inside the box, which works in Chrome and Edge but not everywhere. If the page navigates away, your side buttons work — that navigation is the proof.
Is a high clicks-per-second number good?
It measures you, not the mouse. Clicks per second is a reflex and technique figure that click-speed games popularised; a healthy mouse will register whatever you can produce. Use it to confirm rapid clicks aren't being dropped.
My mouse works here but not in a game. Why?
Games often read input through raw device APIs rather than the standard pointer events a browser sees, so vendor drivers, polling-rate settings and USB power management can affect a game while leaving a browser unaffected. A pass here means the hardware is sound.
Can I test a trackball or a graphics tablet?
Yes. Both present as pointing devices, so buttons and movement register normally. A pen tablet will also draw on the touch screen test grid, which is a quicker way to check its whole active area.