Change Mouse Primary Button to Left or Right in Windows 10

Mouse Icon Big 256 1

How to Change Mouse Primary Button to Left or Right in Windows 10

By default, Windows 10 is using the left mouse button as a primary button. The primary button is used for functions such as selecting and dragging your files, folders, paragraphs or text, and so on. In certain conditions, e.g. depending on the connected hardware, it can be useful to assign the primary mouse button to the right button instead of the left button. Here are three methods you can use to swap the button function.

In Mouse Properties, you can swap the mouse buttons, so the right button will become your primary button, and the left button would be used to open context menus. Besides the Mouse Properties applet, you can use Settings, or apply a Registry tweak.

To Change Mouse Primary Button to Left or Right in Windows 10,

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Navigate to Devices \ Mouse.
  3. On the right, select Left or Right in the Select your primary button drop down list.
  4. Close the Settings app.

You are done.

Alternatively, the primary button can be set in the classic Mouse Properties dialog.

Change Mouse Primary Button to Left or Right in Mouse Properties

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Navigate to Devices \ Mouse.
  3. On the right, click on the Advanced Mouse Settings link.
  4. In the Mouse Properties dialog, switch to the Buttons tab. It should open by default.
  5. Turn on the option Switch primary and secondary buttons.

Note. The classic Mouse applet can be found in the Control Panel under Control Panel\Hardware and Sound. There, click on the Mouse link.

Finally, you can swap the buttons with a Registry tweak.

Change Mouse Primary Button to Left or Right in Registry

  1. Open the Registry Editor app.
  2. Navigate to the following branch: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse
    . See how to go to a Registry key with one click.
  3. In the right pane of the Desktop branch, modify or create a new string (REG_SZ) value SwapMouseButtons.
  4. Set it to one of the following values:
    0 = Set the left mouse button as your primary button.
    1 = Set the right mouse button as your primary button.
  5. To make the changes done by the Registry tweak take effect, you need to sign out and sign in to your user account.

Related articles:

Support us

Winaero greatly relies on your support. You can help the site keep bringing you interesting and useful content and software by using these options:

If you like this article, please share it using the buttons below. It won't take a lot from you, but it will help us grow. Thanks for your support!

Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Exit mobile version
Using Telegram? Subscribe to the blog channel!
Hello. Add your message here.