Someone fixed the worst thing about Apple's Magic Mouse but there's a catch

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Blue Magic Mouse with blue iMac (2021)
Blue Magic Mouse with blue iMac (2021) (Image credit: Luke Filipowicz / iMore)

What you need to know

  • The Lightning port for charging the Magic Mouse is on the bottom because Jony Ive.
  • Someone created a contraption that allows a cable to be connected to the Magic Mouse while maintaining its usability.
  • It turns out you can't charge and use a Magic Mouse at the same time no matter how hard you try.

Apple's Magic Mouse is popular among everyone who uses it and while its low profile feel might not be for everyone, others swear by it. But it has a problem — you have to turn the thing on its side to charge it which is maddening. Unless you follow this fix, that is.

The fix comes courtesy of YouTube channel Unncesessary Inventions and involves 3D printing a mount that sits beneath the Magic Mouse itself and raises it off the desk. That then gives you room to connect a right-angled Lightning cable and still use your Magic Mouse while it charges. It's genius in its simplicity and you can see how it all goes down on YouTube right now.

Today I decided to design a fix to Apple's biggest design flaw on the Magic Mouse and the way you charge it....but Tim Cook really took me for a wild ride on this one.

But alas, there's a problem. While the Magic Mouse continues to function when in the mount and you can indeed charge it, you can't do both at the same time. For reasons known only to Apple, plugging the Magic Mouse into a power source stops its sensor from working, making all of this a bit of a waste of time. It turns out the Magic Mouse won't function when plugged in. Why, Apple? Why?!

If this bothers you as much as it does me, there are plenty of other Magic Mouse anternatives that you can buy instead. And you can charge them all at your leisure, too!

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.