Anybody who has suffered the indignity of splinter, a blister, or a paper reduce is aware of that small issues can typically be massively annoying. You are not going to die from any of those situations, nevertheless it’s nonetheless onerous to focus when, say, the again of your proper foot is rubbing a brand new blister towards the within of your not-quite-broken-in-yet mountaineering boots.

I discovered myself within the computing model of this case yesterday, once I was making an attempt to work on a brand new Mac Mini and was introduced up brief by the truth that my third mouse button (that’s, clicking on the scroll wheel) did nothing. This was odd, as a result of I’ve for a few years assigned this button to “Mission Management” on macOS—a characteristic that tiles each open window in your machine, making it fast and straightforward to modify apps. Once I received the brand new Mini, I instantly added this to my settings. Growth!

And but there I used to be, a pair hours later, clicking the center mouse button by reflex and getting no consequence. This appeared fairly odd—had I solely imagined that I made the settings change? I made the alteration once more in System Settings and went again to work.

However after a reboot later that day to put in an OS replace, I discovered that my shortcut setting for Mission Management had as soon as once more been wiped away. This wasn’t occurring with every other settings adjustments, and it was unusually vexing.

When it occurred a 3rd time, I switched into full “analysis and destroy the issue” mode. Considered one of my Ars colleagues commiserated with me, writing, “This type of powerful-annoying stuff is simply so widespread. I swear at the least as soon as each few months, some shortcut or no matter simply stops working, and typically, after per week or so, it begins working once more. No rhyme, motive, or obvious causality besides that computer systems are simply [unprintable expletives].”

However even when computer systems are [unprintable expletives], their issues have usually been encountered and glued by another poor soul. I turned to the Web for assist… and instantly stumbled upon an Apple discussion thread referred to as “MacOS mouse shortcuts are reset upon restart or shutdown.” The poster—and most of these replying—stated that the odd habits had solely appeared in macOS Sequoia. One reply claimed to have recognized the supply of the bug and provided a repair: