As a left-handed person in a right-handed world, I sometimes just adjust to certain things in life. When something needs to be cut, I hand the scissors to my wife or to whomever happens to be nearby. Scissors are a frustration I’ve come to deal with, but not everything made for right-handers has to be enforced upon those of us in our right mind. (Okay, I had to use that lame left-handed joke—I’m sorry.)
I recently decided to use my left hand as my mouse hand after years of giving in to using my right hand, and I can say that it feels much better to be able to do so. Here’s a few remarks I have about it and some things that have helped along the way.
Moving the Mouse
I ditched the ugly Apple Mighty Mouse several months ago when it pieced out on me. Apple has since remedied the problems that plagued me by introducing the Magic Mouse, but months earlier I purchased the Logitech M555b Bluetooth mouse, and I love it.
Last month, I set the mouse on the left side of my MacBook Pro and switched the buttons for a left-hander. I decided to do so since I am the only person who uses my Mac, and, even if someone else needed to use it, the trackpad would still functional normally for them.
My movements were awkward at first since I have been primarily using my right hand for twenty years. I’m the only lefty in my family, so I never won with the mouse. Even when my brothers and I would play the same first-person-shooter games like Quake II, they’d get mad at me for leaving the gun displayed on the left side of the screen.
⌘ (Cmd) + Tab
After re-adjusting to the use of my left hand, another big challenge frustrated me: the ⌘ (Cmd) + Tab function. For right-handed people, it’s easy to use the left hand to switch between applications using the Cmd+Tab function. If you’re a lefty, you may have run into my frustration. It’s too much work to move your left hand off the mouse to use this function. So while I felt improvement with usage of the mouse, my keyboard functions suffered. The problem is prevalent because there’s no Tab on the right side of the keyboard.
Cue the Maestro
I searched Twitter and Google for an answer to my ailments. I needed an application to remap or assign buttons on my keyboard. I decided since the \ button is relatively symmetrical with the Tab button, I should be able to assign a shortcut of Cmd+\ to act as a left-handed version of Cmd+Tab. I came across Keyboard Maestro. The full version is available for $36, but I’ve yet to fully dive into it because of the steep price.
I mapped Cmd+\ to KM’s “Application Switcher’” which mimics Mac OS X’s quite nicely after some simple changes, like enlarging the icons. One nice feature KM has that OS X lacks dims apps that are hidden. This visual cue is helpful to me because I hide most of my applications when not in use (even though I have them spread across nine Spaces).
Happy Camper
I wish I could say using my mouse with my left hand has quadrupled my productivity, but it hasn’t. It really hasn’t improved any, but I feel comfortable using my dominant hand. I’ve also given a few tips to some people that I wish I would’ve thought of years ago myself. I told one lady that has a left-handed child surrounded by righties to plug in an additional USB mouse for the lefty child. Buttons for that mouse should be able to be configured accordingly, then every family member is comfortable.
Do you have any stories as a lefty to share? Comment below so we can discuss.