Your mouse, your rules.

Chapter 01 Contents

It started with a tired editor at 2 a.m.

It was close to two in the morning. I was on a call with my editor, going through a project, and I asked him a simple question: what would make your work easier?

I expected him to ask for a faster computer, a new plugin or more storage. He didn't. He said he was tired. Not tired of editing, tired of reaching.

Every few seconds his right hand left the mouse to find a key on the keyboard: a cut, an undo, a ripple delete, a zoom, a switch to another window.

• Cut
• Undo
• Ripple delete
• Zoom
• Switch window

Then back to the mouse. Then back to the keyboard. Hundreds of times in a single session.

“I really need some shortcuts,” he said. “But I already know the shortcuts. The problem is that they're all over there.”

That line stayed with me.

The shortcuts were not the problem. Where they lived was the problem.

Chapter 02 Contents

The problem was never the editor, it was his tools

Once you see it, you can't stop seeing it. Most people who work on a computer all day sit with one hand on the mouse and the other hovering over a keyboard.

The mouse in their hand usually has extra buttons that do nothing useful. The keyboard was designed for typing letters, not for scrubbing a timeline or jumping between twelve open windows.

So the hand travels. Back and forth, all day. It is slow, it breaks your focus, and by the end of a long edit your wrist and shoulder know about it.

My editor was not doing anything wrong. He was doing exactly what his tools asked of him. The tools were asking for too much.

Chapter 03 Contents

Listening first: what the editor actually needed

We stayed on that call for a long time. I didn't pitch anything. I asked questions and wrote everything down.

By the end, the picture was clear.

He did not need more shortcuts. He needed the shortcuts he already had to be under his hand, in the app he was in, at the moment he needed them.

And he needed that without new hardware and without memorising another cheat sheet.

Chapter 04 Contents

A lot of ideas, most thrown away, and what survived

The next morning I started building. The first idea was simple: put the most common actions on the mouse's spare buttons. That helped, but a mouse only has so many buttons, and every app needs different ones.

So the ideas kept growing. What if one button opened a wheel of your favourite actions, and you just flicked towards the one you wanted? What if the same button did something different in Premiere Pro, in After Effects and in your browser, without you changing anything? What if a small movement while holding a button could do the job of a key combination?

I tried a lot of versions. Many looked clever and felt terrible to use, so they went in the bin. What survived is what you can use today:

Chapter 05 Contents

Thirty days of late nights: the Studio and the extensions

What followed was about thirty days of continuous work. Long days, sleepless nights, and a lot of testing inside the real apps: Premiere Pro, After Effects, browsers and everyday Windows and Mac software. If something only worked in a demo, it didn't count.

The editing side grew fast. The mouzeclick Studio for Premiere Pro came out of the same conversations:

• Removing silences
• Captions with 289 styled looks
• Hinglish captions
• Retakes
• Timeline tools
• Safe frames and guides for 65 platform presets

Then came the extensions for Premiere Pro and After Effects, panels that do in one click what used to take a dozen.

From version 0.29 on, every release was written down and published, in order, on our What's new page. Scroll through What's new and you can watch the app grow release by release.

Every change, written downRelease notes in the app, and every release since 0.29 on What's new

Chapter 06 Contents

Not just for editors: who mouzeclick is for

Video editors are the reason mouzeclick exists, and they are still the people we build for first. But somewhere in those thirty days it became obvious that the problem is much bigger than editing.

A designer jumping between Photoshop and a browser has the same problem. So does a developer switching between a code editor, a terminal and twenty tabs. So does anyone who spends the day in spreadsheets, email and video calls.

Everyone's hand travels. Everyone has a mouse with buttons that do nothing.

So mouzeclick works with any mouse, in any app. You don't need new hardware. You set it up once, and your setup follows you.

• Premiere Pro
• After Effects
• Photoshop
• Chrome
• VS Code
• Slack

Mouse

Any mouse. No new hardware.

Runs on

Windows 10 and 11, macOS 12 or newer

Your setup

Follows you to your other computer through your account (Windows only for now)

Chapter 07 Contents

Your mouse, your rules: what we promise

That is the whole idea, and it became our motto: your mouse, your rules. You decide what every button does, in every app. Here is what we promise in return:

1. Any mouse.

   No special hardware and no lock-in. The mouse you already own is enough.

2. Honest pricing.

   One plan with everything in it. The price you see is the price you pay. Pay for 30 days at a time, or monthly and cancel any time.

3. Every update in the open.

   Each release is posted on What's new first, with its notes.

4. You shape what comes next.

   Send an idea from Bugs & ideas inside the app. If we put it on the roadmap, we add free days to your licence, and more when it ships. Confirmed bugs earn days too.

Chapter 08 Contents

Here we are: mouzeclick is open to everyone

A month ago

this was a tired editor on a late-night call.

Today

it is mouzeclick, and we are opening it to everyone.

If you have ever felt your hand leave the mouse one time too many, this was built for you.

Try it, tell us what's missing, and help us make the next version better. The next feature on the list might be yours.

Arvind Goswami
Founder of mouzeclick · Mumbai, India