TOPIC: TRACKBALL
The Evoluent VerticalMouse 4 and Linux: a worthwhile ergonomic investment
3rd March 2025
For anyone spending long hours at a computer, wrist pain is an occupational hazard that tends to arrive slowly and outstay its welcome. The Evoluent VerticalMouse 4 has built a strong following among people looking to address that discomfort, its design placing the hand upright in a natural handshake position rather than forcing the palm flat against a desk. For Linux users, however, the out-of-the-box experience leaves something to be desired, and a few terminal commands are needed before the mouse behaves as it should.
The Ergonomic Case
The fundamental problem with a conventional mouse is that it holds the hand palm-down, a position that twists the forearm bones and places sustained tension on the wrist and median nerve. Used daily over years, this is a well-established route to RSI and, in more serious cases, carpal tunnel syndrome. The Evoluent addresses this by rotating the mouse through 90 degrees, so the hand rests on its side, eliminating that forearm twist. Terence Eden, writing about his experience with several generations of the device, notes that since adopting the vertical mouse range his wrists have been free of pain, and references an evaluation by a team of physical therapists, ergonomists and medical doctors at the University of California, Berkeley health services clinic, who found that the mouse promoted a neutral wrist and forearm posture.
The VM4R (the right-handed wired version) is the same fundamental shape as the earlier generation 3, but with a wider base and a larger lip along the lower edge to prevent the little finger from dragging on the desk surface. The pointer speed button, which on the generation 3 was located on the underside of the mouse (an awkward place to reach during use), has been moved to the top on the VM4R, where it can be operated without lifting or repositioning the hand. Two thumb buttons are included, a feature that is particularly useful for anyone whose index finger is suffering the effects of years of left-clicking. The chrome finish looks striking, though it does attract fingerprints.
What Linux Gets Right Out of the Box
The basic mouse functions work without any configuration on Linux, confirmed on Ubuntu 9.10 and higher. The cursor moves, the scroll wheel scrolls, and the pointer speed button changes the tracking speed as expected. The one immediate gap is that the scroll wheel click does not perform a middle-click paste, as Linux users might expect, and the additional buttons do not behave intuitively until they are remapped. Since Evoluent provides no Linux driver or configuration utility (their software is Windows-only), all customisation goes through the terminal.
Running xinput list will show the mouse in the list of input devices, typically appearing as:
"Evoluent VerticalMouse 4" id=8 [XExtensionPointer]Despite the mouse reporting 14 buttons, only 6 are physical buttons. The physical layout, as documented by Eden, is as follows: button 1 is the index finger (left click), button 2 is the ring finger (middle click), button 3 is the little finger (right click), buttons 4 and 5 are scroll up and scroll down respectively, button 8 is the upper thumb button, button 9 is the scroll wheel click and button 10 is the lower thumb button.
Remapping the Buttons: the Quick Method
The xinput{target="_blank"} tool allows button remapping in a single command. The following mapping, used by Eden himself, disables the index and ring fingers as direct clickers, makes the lower thumb button act as the primary left click, restores middle-click paste to the scroll wheel click, and sets the little finger as a right click:
xinput set-button-map "Evoluent VerticalMouse 4" 0 3 0 4 5 6 7 0 2 1 2The position of each number in the string corresponds to a button number, and the value at each position is the action that button will perform. Experiment with different values until the layout suits your workflow. This change takes effect immediately, but it is session-only: a reboot will reset the buttons to their defaults.
As MrEricSir notes in his guide to the mouse on Linux, the numeric device ID shown by xinput list will vary from one machine to the next and should not be relied upon in scripts. Using the full device name in quotes, as shown above, is the more reliable approach.
Making the Remapping Permanent: the Xorg Method
To make the button mapping survive a reboot, an Xorg configuration file is the recommended route. The first step is to identify the USB ID of the mouse by running lsusb and looking for the Evoluent entry in the output:
Bus 004 Device 004: ID 1a7c:0191 Evoluent VerticalMouse 4The portion you need is 1a7c:0191, though as MrEricSir points out, this will likely differ on your own system. With that value in hand, create the configuration file:
sudo nano /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-evoluent.confPaste in the following block, substituting your own USB ID and preferred button mapping string:
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "Evoluent"
MatchUSBID "1a7c:0191"
Option "ButtonMapping" "0 3 0 4 5 6 7 0 2 1 2"
EndSectionNote that the button mapping string in this file does not begin with the device ID: that was only required for the xinput command. Save, close and reboot, and the mapping will be applied automatically on every subsequent login. The configuration file path above is confirmed to work on Ubuntu; on other distributions, the relevant directory may differ.
One known complication with the Xorg approach is that the USB ID can change if the mouse is plugged into a different USB port, as some systems enumerate devices differently by port. If the mapping stops working after a port change, running lsusb again will confirm whether the ID has changed, and the configuration file will need updating accordingly.
Making the Remapping Permanent: the Script Method
A commenter on Eden's post, Lukas, offers an alternative that sidesteps the USB ID problem entirely by extracting the device's current session ID dynamically at startup using grep:
xinput --set-button-map $(xinput list | grep -i "evoluent verticalmouse" | grep -o "id=[0-9]*" | grep -o '[0-9]*') 1 3 3 4 5 6 7 9 2 8 11 12 13 14This can be saved as a shell script, made executable with chmod +x, and added to the startup applications of your desktop environment. Because xinput needs the display server to be fully initialised before it can act, adding a sleep 5 line at the top of the script is advisable to prevent it from running too early on login.
A Note on the Scroll Wheel
One recurring theme in user reports is that the scroll wheel on the VM4R has a noticeably tactile, audible click with each scroll step. Eden remarks that he personally prefers a free-spinning wheel and found the VM4R's scroll noticeably stiffer than the generation 2 model. A separate user, James, describes a more persistent problem across three separate Evoluent mice: the scroll wheel intermittently loses stability, causing the page to jump unexpectedly rather than scrolling smoothly one step at a time. Eden's suggested remedy is to clean the wheel gently with isopropyl alcohol, as dust and debris can accumulate inside the mechanism over time.
Disabling the LED
The Evoluent logo on the mouse glows constantly during use. For those who find this distracting, particularly in a dark environment, there is a hardware method to disable it that does not require any software. Unplug the mouse, then hold down the negative (−) end of the pointer speed rocker button on the side of the mouse and plug it back in while keeping the button held. The logo light will remain off until the procedure is reversed by holding the positive (+) end of the same button during reconnection. This method is confirmed to work on later production units of the VM4R.
Using the Mouse on Wayland
The methods described above, xinput and Xorg configuration files, are specific to the X11 display server. Wayland is now the default on most major distributions, including Ubuntu and Fedora, and neither approach will work there. The situation under Wayland is, however, somewhat better than it first appears.
For basic use, several users have reported that the Evoluent VerticalMouse 4 works largely as expected under Wayland with no configuration at all, with button behaviour closer to what most users would want out of the box. If that is sufficient for your needs, nothing further is required.
For custom button remapping under Wayland, the modern approach documented by Olivier Mehani in a December 2024 guide uses the hwdb subsystem, which operates at the udev level below the display server entirely. This makes it display-server agnostic and avoids the need for any background daemons or services.
The first step is to identify the scan codes of the buttons you wish to remap. Install evtest and run it as root to observe raw input events from the mouse:
sudo evtestSelect the Evoluent device from the list and press each button you want to remap. The output will show a scan code value in the MSC_SCAN field for each button press. On the VM4R, the lower thumb button has scan code 90004 and the upper thumb button has scan code 90006.
Next, determine the key codes you wish to map those buttons to. The libinput tool can show key codes as you press them:
sudo libinput debug-events --device /dev/input/eventX --show-keycodesSubstitute the correct event device for your keyboard, which can be found by running libinput debug-events without a --device argument and looking for the keyboard in the list. With both the scan codes and the desired key codes identified, create a file in /etc/udev/hwdb.d/. The filename should end in .hwdb, for example 70-evoluent.hwdb. The following example remaps the two thumb buttons to the Shift key and the Super key respectively, as Mehani uses them:
evdev:name:Evoluent VerticalMouse 4:*
ID_INPUT_KEY=1
ID_INPUT_KEYBOARD=1
KEYBOARD_KEY_90004=leftshift
KEYBOARD_KEY_90006=leftmetaThe ID_INPUT_KEY and ID_INPUT_KEYBOARD lines mark the mouse as a device capable of generating key events, which is required for the remapping to take effect. Once the file is saved, rebuild and reload the hardware database:
sudo systemd-hwdb update
sudo udevadm triggerRestart your Wayland session and the new mappings will be active. The key names used in the file are lowercase versions of the Linux input event constants with the KEY_ prefix removed, so KEY_LEFTSHIFT becomes leftshift and KEY_LEFTMETA becomes leftmeta. Adjust the scan codes and key names to suit your own preferred layout.
Worth the Effort
The Evoluent VerticalMouse 4 is a well-considered device for anyone whose wrists are beginning to protest at years of conventional mouse use. For Linux users, the absence of any official configuration software is a genuine gap, but the community has documented reliable workarounds thoroughly. On X11, the xinput command and Xorg configuration files give you a permanent, flexible setup with minimal effort. On Wayland, Mehani's December 2024 guide demonstrates that the hwdb approach provides an equally robust solution that works at the kernel input level, independent of any display server. As Eden observes in his review, the lack of a good mouse configuration interface on Linux is a genuine oversight, but it is one that a little patience can overcome.