ExactMouse Redux – alternative to the SteelSeries ExactMouse Tool for macOS

ExactMouse Redux

A free alternative to the SteelSeries ExactMouse Tool for macOS, inspired by the original. Turn off mouse acceleration on your Mac for precise, linear 1:1 mouse movement.

Many gamers used the SteelSeries ExactMouse Tool to disable the Mac’s mouse acceleration curve. That tool dates from 2010 and stopped working properly on macOS 27: it only runs through Rosetta, its settings no longer reliably reach the mouse, and Start on Log On has been broken since macOS 13.

That is what inspired ExactMouse Redux: an independent rebuild from scratch for current macOS (Redux means “brought back”). You get the same three modes and the same menu bar workflow, plus live mouse diagnostics. It runs natively on Apple Silicon (M1–M5) and Intel, from macOS 14.4 Sonoma up to macOS 27. It works with any mouse: SteelSeries, Logitech, Razer, Zowie and others.

 

_{Free · Apple Silicon & Intel · macOS 14.4 – 27 · all versions · changelog}

Deutsch · Legal notice · License

[!IMPORTANT] Unofficial community project, not a SteelSeries product. It is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored or supported by SteelSeries ApS. It was inspired by the SteelSeries ExactMouse Tool, and the idea for the original comes from SteelSeries. SteelSeries and ExactMouse are trademarks or registered trademarks of SteelSeries ApS. They are used here only to name that inspiration and to describe compatibility. The app contains no code, binaries or artwork from SteelSeries. See LEGAL.md.

_{Mouse details window (example data)}

Features

• Three modes, same as the original

  Menu	Icon	What it does
  ExactMouse: Always On	🟢	Acceleration off, re-applied every 5 s and right after a mouse connects or the Mac wakes. Wins against games, apps and System Settings.
  ExactMouse: On	🟡	Acceleration off. If System Settings or an app changes the mouse settings, it accepts the change, remembers it and switches to Off.
  ExactMouse: Off	🔴	Normal macOS acceleration, with the value that was active before.

• Main input device at the top of the menu, with a real battery gauge and estimated remaining time (or a USB icon for wired mice), vendor, type, connection, polling rate and acceleration state at a glance.
• Clean, native menu: built from real macOS menu items, so spacing, font and highlight match system menus exactly. Main device, mode and devices at a glance, everything else in the settings window (⌘,) with General (version, updates, start at login, links), Mouse (mode, speed, trackpads, appearance), Devices, Apps, Scrolling, Diagnostics, a searchable Help and Pro tabs.
• Buttons & macros (Pro): map every extra mouse button (back/forward, Mission Control, Spaces, shortcuts, apps, media keys) and the 12 side keys of MMO mice like the Razer Naga (beta), per app if you like. Macros can be recorded or built step by step, then played once, repeated while held, or toggled.
• Statistics: how far your mouse travels (today, month, year, all time), clicks per button, your most used macros, and a weekday × hour heat map of when you move, click and scroll. Everything stays local, with no keystrokes recorded.
• Gaming: automatic game mode, low battery warnings, a sensitivity calculator (cm/360°, eDPI, conversion between games), and setting the DPI of Logitech mice.
• Automation: exactmouse-redux:// URLs for Shortcuts, Focus, Raycast and Stream Deck.
• Pro features (free during Early Access): stepless linear fine tuning (0.10–4.00× in 0.01 steps, with fine slider, number field and arrows), settings per device, profiles per app (e.g. 1:1 only in your game), scroll acceleration off, mouse-only reverse scrolling, plus the diagnostics, automatic game mode and battery warnings. The Pro tab shows them all at a glance.
• Speed without acceleration: a slider from 0.3× to 2.6×, always linear and never a curve. The middle position is raw 1:1.
• Built-in updates: a daily check against GitHub Releases, one-click install with checksum and signature check.
• Menu with explanations. Every mode tells you what it does, and the menu shows a live status line saying whether macOS currently applies acceleration.
• Battery in the menu bar. A small upright battery appears to the left of the mouse icon when a wireless mouse reports its level, and turns red at 15 %. The exact percentage is in the tooltip.
• Connected mice with vendor, connection type (USB cable, USB wireless receiver, Bluetooth), battery and polling rate.
• Trackpads too. The built-in trackpad and the Magic Trackpad also move 1:1 in all three modes. This is on by default and can be switched off under Settings → Mouse → Include trackpads. The details window shows trackpad information: whether acceleration is off, tracking speed, tap to click, Force Click, three-finger drag and battery.
• Mouse Details & Measurement
  • Polling rate, measured live from the raw HID reports (125 … 8000 Hz).
  • Transmission / wireless link quality: how evenly the reports arrive, with on-time share, dropouts and jitter.
  • Bluetooth signal as bars plus a plain word (Excellent / Good / Fair / Weak), with the dBm value in brackets.
  • Configured DPI read from Logitech mice (HID++ over Bluetooth or USB, read-only).
  • DPI measurement for all other mice. macOS cannot read the DPI step stored inside the mouse. Hold the space bar, move the mouse a known distance along a ruler, and Redux works out the DPI from the raw sensor counts.
• Four menu bar icon styles, modelled on polished Mac utilities: Colour (default), Monochrome, Pointer and a compact 1:1 badge.
• Start on Log On through the modern SMAppService API.
• English and German, picked automatically from your system language.
• Imports the settings of an installed original tool on first launch.

Install

Option 1 – one command (recommended)

Open Terminal and paste:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iamadesignerusually/ExactMouse-Redux/main/install.sh | bash

This downloads the latest release, checks its SHA-256 checksum, installs it to /Applications and starts it. Because it is downloaded through the terminal, macOS shows no Gatekeeper warning. You can read the script before you run it.

Uninstall: … | bash -s -- --uninstall, and add --purge to remove the settings as well.

Option 2 – download the DMG

1. Download ExactMouseRedux.dmg. This link always gives you the newest version; older versions are under Releases.
2. Open it and drag the app into Applications.
3. Start the app. The app is free and not notarized by Apple, so macOS says it “could not verify” the app. Click Done.
4. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down and click Open Anyway next to ExactMouse Redux, then confirm with your password. You only have to do this once.

Requires macOS 14.4 or later, on Apple Silicon or Intel (universal binary).

Permissions. Turning off acceleration needs no permission. The live measurements in Mouse Details need Input Monitoring (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Input Monitoring). Redux evaluates the data only locally and only while the details window is open. Nothing is stored or sent anywhere.

Why the original broke

The original 2010 binary has three problems on current macOS:

1. Intel/PowerPC only. It needs Rosetta, and macOS 27 is the last release that supports Rosetta for general apps.
2. Deprecated API. It disables acceleration with NXOpenEventStatus() + IOHIDSetAccelerationWithKey("HIDMouseAcceleration", -1). That only writes the event-system-wide value. Reading it back still says “off”, so the tool never notices when a mouse ends up with its acceleration from System Settings again, for example after a reconnect or wake. In Always On mode it compares against a value cached at launch, so it may never re-apply at all.
3. Removed login-item API. It uses LSSharedFileList, which does nothing since macOS 13.

ExactMouse Redux is a native rebuild for Apple Silicon and Intel. It turns acceleration off for the system and for every connected mouse and trackpad, checks that the setting actually took effect, and re-applies it right away when a mouse reconnects or the Mac wakes up.

Diagnostics

"/Applications/ExactMouse Redux.app/Contents/MacOS/ExactMouseRedux" --status

This prints the global value and the value for each mouse. A negative value means acceleration is off.

Settings

The defaults domain is io.github.iamadesignerusually.ExactMouseRedux. The keys accMode (1 = Off, 2 = On, 3 = Always On) and SSMouseOriginalAccelValue are compatible with the original.

FAQ

Is this the official SteelSeries ExactMouse Tool? No. It is an independent, unofficial re-implementation with the same functionality, made by a user of the original tool. SteelSeries has nothing to do with it.

The SteelSeries ExactMouse Tool doesn’t work on macOS 27 (or Sonoma / Sequoia / Tahoe). What now? Install ExactMouse Redux. It brings over the mode and settings of the original automatically. Then quit the original and remove it from your login items.

Does it work on Apple Silicon (M1, M2, M3, M4, M5)? Yes, natively, with no Rosetta. It is a universal binary for Apple Silicon and Intel.

Does it only work with SteelSeries mice? No. It disables the macOS acceleration curve for every connected mouse, including SteelSeries Rival, Sensei, Aerox and Prime, Logitech, Razer and others. It also works on the built-in trackpad and the Magic Trackpad. You can switch that off with Include trackpads in Settings → Mouse.

Does it work on the MacBook trackpad? Yes. With Include trackpads on (the default), trackpad movement is linear too. It feels slower at first because the speed boost for fast swipes is gone. While acceleration is off, the tracking speed slider in System Settings has no effect.

Is it the same as the “Pointer acceleration” switch in System Settings? Similar, but Redux also enforces the setting against games and apps that turn acceleration back on (Always On), applies it immediately when a mouse reconnects, and shows what is actually in effect for each mouse.

Can it read or change my mouse’s DPI? macOS cannot read the DPI step stored in the mouse firmware, which you set with tools like SteelSeries GG. Redux can measure your DPI instead (Mouse Details → Measure DPI). It never changes mouse firmware settings.

Is it free? Does it collect data? The app is free; Pro features are free during Early Access. It is proprietary software (not open source, see LICENSE). It has no tracking and collects no data. The only network access is the update check, which asks the GitHub API for the latest version once a day and can be switched off in Settings → General, plus downloading an update when you install one.

Versioning

Releases follow Semantic Versioning and are tagged vX.Y.Z. The version, build number and commit are shown in the About window and with --version. All changes are listed in CHANGELOG.md.

Credits & license

_{Keywords: SteelSeries ExactMouse Tool for Mac, ExactMouse macOS 27, disable mouse acceleration Mac, turn off mouse acceleration macOS, raw mouse input Mac, linear mouse movement, mouse acceleration fix for gaming on macOS, Apple Silicon.}

Made by Maximilian Dahl (@iamadesignerusually). © 2026 Maximilian Dahl. All rights reserved. ExactMouse Redux is proprietary software, see the license agreement. Versions up to 3.7.5 were published under the MIT License. See LEGAL.md for the trademark, privacy and liability notice. Bug reports and ideas are welcome as issues.

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