I love the Logitech hardware quality but I really wish they'd work on their software quality.
I'm using a G502 at work right now with Logitech Gaming Software and the two completely baffling decisions they made with that software on macOS:
1. It has to be running. If I launch it for configuration and hit ⌘Q it stops working and my mouse reverts to the default. I have to remember to close the window instead, which leaves it in the menubar.
2. I can't unmap buttons and have them act as generic HID mouse buttons. I can map buttons to mouse 1, 2, and 3, but I can't go past that. I can map buttons to various special functions, but it would be a hell of a lot more flexible if I could just have mouse 4 and mouse 5 mapped. For example, I can map the "sniper" button to Mission Control, but I can't change its behavior with keyboard modifiers, whereas if it was just Mouse 5 I could use the system configuration to map that to Mission Control and then use keyboard modifiers to change its behavior.
I hated the Logitech driver, it's been a complete dumpster fire -- constantly disconnecting, disabling certain functionality, and just overall a pain to fight. Ended up switching to SteerMouse, the developer's been crazy responsive and even went out of the way to work on MX Master 3 compatibility + support Smart Zoom functionality when it wasn't even previously up for consideration.
Companion software for hardware accessories has historically been terrible. I can't recall an instance where I wanted to keep companion apps besides drivers running in the background.
Whenever possible I would only open them for as long as I needed to configure something, then killed the process if it wasn't necessary.
Thankfully on the Mac I haven't encountered a need for those yet.
It really is quite incredible the unrewarded, often thankless (except that which we're doing now) effort that must go into that.
I had an issue recently with missing drivers for a network card (my fault, I deleted the kernel modules, it had been and now is again working), and it just made me think exactly what you're saying, how glad I am that someone's provided this.
I’d include Razer in the dumpster fire pile. In my estimation, the custom drivers of most HID products seem to be as bad as printer drivers back in the late 1990s/early 2000s. Actually worse because of all the RGB nonsense and cloud bullshit.
I use a razer orbweaver as a macro keyboard, and even though its still for sale it doesn't work with the current version of Synapse. So if you have an orbweaver and another peripheral, you need to run both synapse 2 and 3.
You can remap all G502 buttons to HID mouse button events, just not using any Logitech-supplied software.
Fortunately, these mappings are persistent, so reconfiguring the mouse from a Linux VM, once and for all, was, for me at least, a reasonable alternative.
Unfortunately, the mappings are sufficiently persistent that I don't remember the name of the Linux (command-line) utility that I used several years ago to configure my G502, but a quick Google search suggests the Piper[1] GUI app may be up to the task.
Caveat: if you ever plan on using the mouse with Windows, bear in mind that the Windows HID mouse driver only directly supports buttons 1–5 (though I have observed that the remainder do generate events in the underlying driver stack, so you could hypothetically work around this limitation by writing a filter driver to remap the events, assuming no such driver currently exists).
The Logitech software for the MX mouse interferes with two-finger touchpad scrolling on my Surface Pro 3. I don't know how or why, but clearly they're doing something very wrong. I went years before I figured out that no, touchpad scrolling is not supposed to scroll three screens per millimetre.
omg! thank you so much. I was scratching my head about loss of two-finger scrolling and totally forgot about Logi software installed (Windows 10, hp elitebook 820g1)
That is a very stupid way to design a mouse driver.
But this might help prevent accidental quits. Use the Keyboard System Settings to reassign the quit shortcut for the Logitech app from cmd-q to cmd-opt-q.
Yep. The Windows 10 software is dire. If I RDP into my desktop machine the mouse lights up like a damn Christmas tree and won’t stop until I physically unplug it.
It’s a cheap end G203 which I bought because it has a DPI switch on it so I can jump around easily when doing CAD stuff.
I have considered cracking it open and desoldering the LEDs.
The G203 has onboard memory (which also includes RGB light state / startup effect and DPI steps), so once you have your settings right you can just store the profile in the mouse and uninstall the software.
The latest version of the Logitech software (G HUB) doesn't make this feature obvious though, you have to set a local profile then click the gear icon > my gear > click the mouse image > switch on on-board memory mode > click Slot 1 (Default) > click replace with [the profile you just customized, usually Desktop (default.)
The old Logitech Gaming Software was much simpler in this regard.
Texas-sized 10-4 on that. I had to go find a windows PC and install thr software in order to configure the spinny wheel click stop tension thing because there was absolutely no way to do it in Linux. The default mode was infuriating.
I'm using a G502 at work right now with Logitech Gaming Software and the two completely baffling decisions they made with that software on macOS:
1. It has to be running. If I launch it for configuration and hit ⌘Q it stops working and my mouse reverts to the default. I have to remember to close the window instead, which leaves it in the menubar.
2. I can't unmap buttons and have them act as generic HID mouse buttons. I can map buttons to mouse 1, 2, and 3, but I can't go past that. I can map buttons to various special functions, but it would be a hell of a lot more flexible if I could just have mouse 4 and mouse 5 mapped. For example, I can map the "sniper" button to Mission Control, but I can't change its behavior with keyboard modifiers, whereas if it was just Mouse 5 I could use the system configuration to map that to Mission Control and then use keyboard modifiers to change its behavior.