How to fix the scroll wheel on your Apple mighty mouse

I love the scroll wheel on top of the Apple mighty mouse, but after a while the sweat and oil on your finger combined with grit and dust clogs the whole thing up. This manifests itself in the scroll wheel not scrolling down, or up, or in worst cases, not scrolling all. Here’s how to fix the problem.

I rang Apple and said my scroll wheel was not working and they gave me this simple but effective solution over the phone.

Simply take a sheet of clean white paper, put it on top of the mouse, and press down on the scroll wheel with your finger, but with the paper between your finger and the scroll wheel. Press quite hard with it and at the same time scroll around – moving it up and down and round and round. Move to a different area of the paper and give it another go.

The paper seems to absorb all the oil and gunk off the scroll wheel, and the scroll wheel in turn when it is clean must absorb the gunk off the sensors or whatever is underneath it.

I have found that a better method, especially with a dirty mouse, is to turn the mouse upside down and run the scroll-wheel in circles on a clean piece of paper until all the dirt comes off.

Make sure you use a brand new clean piece of paper.

Do not use alcohol. The rubber scroll wheel is sensitive and the alcohol is not needed.

No not use water. You don’t want water getting into the inside of your mouse!

It’s just dirty. It’s funny that I could not find this information anywhere on Google or on the Apple web page.

This clean paper trick works amazingly well.

Written by Wayne Connor
Mac user since 1996
Helping people master their Macs since 2005


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Comments

304 responses to “How to fix the scroll wheel on your Apple mighty mouse”

  1. Tom

    lol…can’t believe it…it worked.

    1. Bob Thailand

      THANKS !, thought I was up for a new mouse and a long trip to go and get it ! Took 30 seconds to fix using mouse inverted and gently rubbed on sheet of paper, sat the paper on the mouse pad to make sure was a nice flat surface, cheers !

  2. undru

    Thanks Apple, Thanks Macintosh for that phone call.
    !!WORKS WELL!! The upside down version, i enjoyed riding ma wheel (was about to make tha voooom sound in office) :) :)

  3. Bill

    Worked like a charm! Thanks!

  4. Jak

    THANK YOU !!!!!

    Clean paper – invert the mouse – press firmly and roll it around the paper – I saw quite a bit of fluff come out – you will see he webpage go nuts !!!! :)

    Did it a few times now works great again

    In the past with this, I’ve taken the previous mouse apart – cleaned it, but couldn’t get the roller pins back in correctly – it ended in the bin

    Now usually use a BT Magic Mouse with Mac Pro 2008 – had difficulties with BT lagging – just fixed that also:

    trashed com.apple.bluetooth.plist
    Did a SMC reset – power down, unplug the cord, press power button for 5 secs, reassemble and power on
    Also did a PRAM reset

    Then re-paired the BT mouse and all is well

    So with this trick I’ve not got BOTH mice working great

    Thanks again

  5. Scapegoat

    Great. Simple and effective. Thanks.

  6. Hernan

    Thanks a lot!!

  7. Carolyn

    Thanks!!! Love the internet to quickly solve problems. I thought I would need to buy a new mouse. It would only scroll in one direction. Now – back to new!!

  8. Kevin

    WOW! This really worked. I was skeptic. IT was too busy to replace the mouse asap so I found this on search and tried it. Rubbing upside down really hard brought out sone yellow gunk and now it works fine.

  9. Chris

    Awesome,ty

  10. Angela

    OMG, this works! I have 3 more in my desk drawer, getting them out and trying this!

    1. Angela

      Woohoo! I’m 3 for 3 with working mice! You made my day! Mwah!

  11. Jenny

    I tried paper, wiping the scroll wheel to get the oil off. But it didn’t work. Then I realized I have these oil absorbing sheets (for facial use), and tried that. It worked, so I will keep one sheet just for the scroll wheel.

  12. Bob

    Wow. Just wow. It did work :) thanks!

  13. Steve G

    Brilliant solution. I have two mice which had this problem, and now they are both working like new – thanks for the advice.

  14. Taruya

    WOW, amazing, it works!!!!
    It took me some tries to find out what you’ve meant by upside down… because it looks so weird..
    It’s a shame that it doesn’t appear in Apple site.

    1. Taruya

      Thank you so much

  15. Derbak

    Works perfectly!!!!!!!!!

    Thanks dude!

  16. rodolfo

    great! thank you!!

  17. Mirek

    Wow, the best tip I have ever found on the www

    Assumed it was in settings after spending 2 hours messing/changing/new batteries etc etc

  18. Raji

    Thanks it worked.

  19. daz

    Sweet! fixed it. took a bit and lot of junk came out. Thanks

  20. Rick

    Wooow… magic !! THANK YOU !!

  21. yudi

    at first paper doesn’t work then try cleaning fabric. it works. thanks dude.

    1. I’ve never had paper it work! You may need a couple of sheets of the first one gets real dirty.

  22. Monique

    Wow! This actually worked! Thanks so much!

  23. Diane

    Wonderful! At first it only returned my up scroll, but then I put the paper down on a hard surface and rubbed some more-presto all functionality returned. Thank you!!!

  24. Skip

    Awesome. Thank you!

  25. Shana

    works like a charm! thank you

  26. The solution for the mouse worked for me. Thanks

  27. C. Jackson

    Thank you! So glad this string was able to be found easily. Apple.com offers nothing and thought I was going to be forced to buy a new BT mouse this weekend.

  28. Lizzid

    After spending so much time trying to fix this problem, this is magic! thank you!!!

  29. jean

    Worked like a charm

  30. ratna

    WOW ! It worked :))))

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