Microsoft Surface Pro 4 and the Apple Mouse

This will be a bit of a detour from the normal posts. And it might be a surprise to those of you who know me and my affinity for all things Apple.

I use a Microsoft Surface Pro 4. The why is probably best saved for a future post, but the short version is that I wanted a tablet that functioned like an actual computer. I love my iPad, but I can only do so much with it. And Windows 10 isn’t horrible.

With the Surface, I bought the Microsoft keyboard cover. It isn’t horrible either. But I’m not a fan of the trackpad. I guess I’ve been spoiled by the trackpads on my MacBooks. Since I have a nest of Apple Magic Mice roaming around my office, I wanted to use one of them instead of going out and buying a new mouse.

Step 1 – Install the mouse drivers

If you simply connect the Apple Mouse to the Surface in the Bluetooth settings, it will move the cursor around the screen. But it’s flighty, and scrolling doesn’t work.

The fix to that, (as far as I can tell,) is to download the Bootcamp drivers using a Mac.

1. Open BootCamp Assistant
2. From the Action menu, select “Download System Support Software”

Once downloaded, open the folder and navigate to BootCamp > Drivers > Apple. Install the file named AppleWirelessMouse64.exe.

You might not have to reboot, but this is Windows we’re talking about here, so do it anyway.

Voila! You can now scroll.

But this is 2017, and the scroll direction is so 2010 (I think–when did Apple decide to change the scrolling direction?) At any rate, if you’re used to Apple-style scrolling direction, it’ll feel wrong.

Step 2 – Fix scrolling

This part requires editing the Windows registry, so if that makes you nervous, find a Windows geek to do it for you. I found the instructions here, so much thanks to Kevin for posting them. His instructions are for Windows 8, but they apply for Windows 10 as well.

Open Settings, then Mouse & touchpad. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Additional mouse options.

Click the Hardware tab, and find your Apple mouse. You’ll know which one is the Apple mouse because the Location data says Apple Wireless Mouse. When you’ve got the right mouse selected, click Properties.

In the resulting window, change the Property dropdown to Hardware Ids, and look for the VID bit. Right click on that entry and select copy. Then paste it somewhere like Notepad.

Now that you know the hardware ID of your Apple Mouse, open Regedit (Windows key, then type regedit.) Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetEnumHID. From there, find the entry that matches the hardware ID of your mouse (the part you saved from the last step.) Navigate down until you see Device Parameters. Double-click on FlipFlopWheel and change it’s value from 0 to 1. While you’re there, feel free to change the value of FlipFlopHScroll to 1 as well (if you want horizontal scrolling to work the way you think it should.)

Close Regedit, turn off your mouse for 5 seconds or so, then turn it back on. Scrolling should be as Apple intended it to be.

This worked for me on an i5 Windows Surface Pro 4 with 128GB SSD and 4GB of RAM running the latest and greatest Windows 10 at the time of this post. I can’t guarantee the screenshots will look the same if you’re running something else, but this should give you a good starting point. It should also be noted that I’m using an older Apple Wireless mouse (not the new one with the rechargeable battery.)

Also, apologies for all the drawings on the screenshots. I love the Microsoft Pen, though.

UPDATE 5/26/17
The Windows 10 Creators update installed on my Surface last night and reset all the registry keys. I had to go back in and change the scrolling values again this morning. Not a big deal, but if you’re scratching your head after the update, check the registry.