This application is strictly for mouse addicts! I know, most of you know Alt + Tab keyboard shortcut and prefer the same hotkey to quickly switch between open windows and apps. But some users are addicted to the mice and always use mouse for application switching.
In general, when you use mice to switch between apps and windows, you need to move the mouse cursor on the program or window icon on the taskbar and then need to click on the icon to switch to the app. While it might not sound like a tough job, it becomes a tedious job when you have tens of apps running on the taskbar, as you need to look for the right app icon first to see all open windows and browser tabs.
If you are addicted to mice and want to make the apps switching job easier, you should try out Mouse Switcher. Mouse Switcher is a small software that lets you switch between open windows and apps just by moving the mouse cursor on the taskbar and scrolling the mouse wheel.
When you scroll the mouse wheel, you will see the Alt + Tab screen, scroll the wheel again to highlight the window that you want to switch to, and then move away from mouse cursor from the taskbar area to switch to the highlighted window.
For example, let’s say two apps (Notepad and Task Manager) are running on your taskbar, and now you want to switch from Task Manager to Notepad. To switch, you will first move the mouse cursor to the taskbar area, scroll the mouse wheel to see the Alt + Tab screen, and then you will scroll the wheel again to highlight Notepad. And finally, you will need to move the cursor from the taskbar to switch to the Notepad window.
Please note that you won’t see any icons on the taskbar or notification area (system tray) when Mouse Switcher is running. To change Mouse Switcher settings, you need to launch the application from the Start menu or Start screen. By default, it starts with Windows and takes a minimal amount of system resources.
Mouse Switcher officially supports XP, Vista, and Windows 7 operating systems. In our test, it performed flawlessly on Windows 8 x64 as well. If you are using Microsoft mouse or keyboard with Windows 8, don’t forget to download the Microsoft Device Center to easily configure mouse and keyboard settings.
hamid says
i was under the impression that newer versions of windows already scroll the task bar buttons using scroll wheel. i am looking to do this for xp. did i miss something ?
Meena says
download link doesn’t work. anybody have the app?
Ben says
Ignore that, I managed to fix it by installing NET 3.5 :)
Ben says
Im trying to install it on Windows 8 RTM… when I open the installer it tells me I need the NET framework, however I already have that installed…
Notia says
Thanks for posting this. I’ve been looking for this kind of software on Windows.