If your mouse breaks, apps don't recognize it, your netbook's touchpad is a pain, or you simply want to give your wrist a rest, you can turn the passive side of your keyboard into an extra mouse. By assigning movement, speed, and click functions to your keyboard, NeatMouse offers a free, easy, portable, lightweight, and practical way to control your mouse with the keyboard. Best of all, it's more complete than the built-in Windows option.
Why Use a Keyboard as a Mouse?
Due to security systems or just because a programmer made a mistake, many windows and apps on the web or in programs don't recognize the mouse. That's where NeatMouse comes in. Another example is certain games where the mouse plays a big role and yours is broken, unrecognized, or too far from the keyboard actions you need to perform (think strategy games like StarCraft). You can use NeatMouse. Or maybe you have a netbook or laptop and absolutely hate the touchpad. Again, NeatMouse is your answer. But what exactly is NeatMouse? It's an application that lets you control your mouse with the keyboard through customizable movement key assignments.
Better Than the Built-in Windows Option
Yes, Windows itself lets you control the mouse with the keyboard, but Microsoft's original option lacks special features like scrolling up and down within a window. Neatmouse has that, which alone makes it worth your attention. With an interface that looks simple to configure and proves to be in practice, control your mouse with the keyboard in a more complete way, specifying activation keys and fixed keys that execute actions as if you were moving the mouse.
Customization and Speed Control
First, the app comes with keys mapped to the numeric keypad, covering all possible movement directions, three buttons for left, middle, and right, and two scroll directions. A mouse controlled by your keyboard, ready to go.
If you want to go beyond the basic setup and customize the keys, you can choose whatever you want simply by clicking or pressing Space on each box and then entering the desired key. Save your configuration file and you're ready. NeatMouse doesn't stop there: it also has an activation/deactivation key (Scroll Lock by default), customizable movement speed, and a speed modifier key with a customizable multiplier. In other words, if the mouse moves at a value of 20 and you press the modifier key, the speed jumps to the value specified in Alt. Speed. Ingenious, practical, and better than Windows' built-in tool.
For those who want to try it, the app is portable, uses just 2 MB of RAM, and is completely free for Windows XP SP2, Vista, 7, 8, and 10 in both 32- and 64-bit versions.
