How to: Cleaning your Apple Mighty Mouse

I had ball that didn't scroll in one direction. Didn't want to take mouse apart, or use liquid, so I used canned air, squirted through the mouse ball opening. Worked!
But, what happens when the MM needs a new battery??

Nu Tron

Thank you very much!! The isopropyl method worked!!!
Unfortunately, now my scroll is working, but the third button stopped working... ¬¬ (but it happens sometimes, normally it works again magically....).
I was almost buying another mouse in ebay, and it`s very expensive here.
My tackball was completely stuck for months, I tried all the other methods, rubing vigorously, rubing vigorously upside down, rubing vigorously and pressing, I was almost using the desperate "crack open" method.

I used SIX soaked cotton swaps.

The isopropyl methor worked, I used six heavily soaked cotton swaps, it means, twelve sides! The tackball was outrageously dirty.

From now on, I will clean my hand surgically before using the mouse. oO

The easiest way so far is to change the mighty mouse with a normal mouse with a normal wheel scroll. It works perfectly. At least i'll use it until Apple is going to improve this stupid scroll ball.

I was actually going to purchase a mighty mouse in a few days, but now i'm not so sure.

Do I want to buy a product with such a design flaw that means every couple of months i'll have to crack it open, or use an alcohol liquid to clean the ball?

Why does Steve Jobs allow his company to sell something which is clearly not fit for purpose?

Hi guys,

Read below if your third button doesn't work after tipping in alcohol or other solution..

I have had the same problems with my mighty mouse. I tried rolling it around on paper (works 50%) of the time, sticky tape (bad idea), alcohol solution as well as other techniques.

After the alcohol solution, the trackball still didn't work and only the third mouse button worked. So now I had two problems...grrrr!

I decided that I had to crack it open and broke open the mouse as instructed above.

I disconnected the two cables leading from the finger button sensor and the trackball. Unscrewed the three screws under the top of the mouse.

I carefully removed the white cover covering the track ball and removed the trackball and associated roller magnets (4 x colored white and black). I cleaned the roller ball and the magnet rollers and then put it back together. I now found that the scroll ball worked perfectly but the third button was still having problems.

I didn't give up as I had nothing to lose. I again removed the trackball and this time carefully removed the components housed underneath the track ball by carefully prying against the edges of the housing until it popped up. I saw that there was a square of grey rubber covering the circuitry. I carefully removed the grey cover and found that the circuit board and grey rubber was wet on the underside. I then carefully dried the circuitry and the rubber insulation and put everything back together.

Mouse now works perfectly...just like it did when it was new!!!

Be careful with handling the circuitry otherwise you could end up with no mouse...

Hope this helps those with the third mouse button problem!!!

Cheers,

Matt

I used a porcupine quill :D, q-tip and nail polish remover -- patiently, with love. I think, the digging with something that wouldn't break and get stuck inside is the actual key to the cleaning.
Works better than before!!
:)

Yes! You absolutely HAVE to use isopropyl alcohol to clean the mouse button--Windex and other household cleaners just don't do it.

I used a bit of nail polish remover (non-acetone) with a Q-tip. Works...90%.

Thank you Google for finding this site. Like most everyone here, I've struggled with the alcohol wipe, Mac cleaning video, and was ready to "crack" the damn thing open. Bravo to Mr. Oz! I just rolled it back and forth on a clean piece of paper and it's back working like it should!

Holy CRAP, it freakin' works!!! Thanks so much! I did the Q-tip thing and I actually saw the dirt on the Q-tip. I held it upside down and wiped the ball. I did dry it with a tissue. But the thing freakin' works! It does beat opening it up. I'm glad I checked this site out! Except, I already did buy a few of these mouses on eBay....so I'll have extras. But this is great. Thanks so much.

And yes, Mr. Oz's trick is the best!

People should know that when you 'crack' open the mighty mouse, your really do CRACK it open. The glue comes loose and you will have to attach new glue in order to get the oval band, that comes off first, stick to the mouse again... So think hard before you undertake this kind of 'cleaning'.

Mr. Oz's paper method worked wonders. I googled this problem and found this. Thanks guys!

yeah ... it turns out on some mouses the ring is glued really hard - that's how I broke mine :) lol

Marin Todorovs last blog post..Problem with AIR Cookbook submissions

Having been frustrated by a malfunctioning down scroll periodically I thankfully found this solution site! My mouse is ages old and goes wacky all the time. I used to fix it by rubbing the ball with a clean pencil eraser (as suggested by Apple phone-in tech) and it usually fixed the problem. Until last week... hence my search for an optional way to clean. I read all the previous posts and figured I'd start with the least invasive. THANKS Mr Oz... the white paper trick did the trick! Now I must try to remember to eat potato chips with my non-scrolling hand!

Mr Oz, you are a genius... It worked like a charm...

Cool. Mr Oz's method worked perfectly for me. Just a piece of paper. Very cool.

how to close opened mighty mouse?

Thanks Mr Oz! You get the prize for easiest track ball cleaning technique:-) Took me two goes of about 20 seconds each, then it was done!!! T
Happy, happy, happy!
Thanks again.

Kevin. UK

I used a bit of after shave in the palm of my hand, rolled the mouse around for a bit then dried off on my brand new trousers. Worked a treat and now my mouse smells like a real man, but obviously well shaved.

Can someone tell me if I will require a "sonic screwdriver" to open my mighty mouse?

isopropanol and Q-Tip worked. It was lot faster than taking it apart. Looking out for the chunks was the hardest part. Took me 2 times but it worked.

Once the mighty mouse collects enough lint and dust, water and alcohol will only move the contaminants around and the malfunction will return. Don't try to disassemble it and all the other procedures that people suggest. The only way to safely clean your mighty mouse is with compressed air. Not the compressed air can you buy in stores, but compressed air from an air compressor. Just like they use in automotive garages. The difference is that air from an air compressor is high pressure. Air pressure from canned air is too low and will not work. Using an air gun attachment, just do a circle around the ball a couple of times and the mighty mouse will work like new. It only takes about a minute to fix. If you don't have access to compressed air you'll have to ask your mechanic.

I tried to clean my mightymouse with alcohol and wipes, wich didn't turn out to work. What worked like a charm was simply rubbing the ball over a piece of clean paper! Moving down was clocked, but after doing some vigorous movements, a big piece of dirt came out and it worked again!
Try this out, if you have the same problems
Good luck ;-)

Daniel

The first thing I learned is that Mighty Mouse cannot fly.Mine ran off the edge of the desk, fell to the floor and died. No amount of shaking and putting in new batteries caused a change in this lack of behavior. I could hear no rattling inside. I could not bear it any longer so I literally cracked it open and saw the little space city inside. Nothing looked broken and now it won't work even more. Well it was kind of fun getting it open without breaking it too much, but I don't know what else to do with it. It's not much to look at for very long.

How to clean apple mighty mouse without taking it apart.

when you first buy a mac you get a box that contains the mouse and keyboard inside that box there is a small black cloth wraped on plastic use that to clean you mighty mouse ball by flipping the mouse upside down and rolling the cloth on the ball thanks but if you dont have that cloth use a tissue or any cloth

I opened my Bluetooth Mighty Mouse and cleaned it. The pictures in the article are illustrative but the info is not. The gray outer ring has to be unglued from the round case (it is not clipped). So beware, you need to use some sort of glue to put it back later. I used a very thin screw driver and went through the gap between all around inside the gap between the bottom external ring and the upper case. Cracking sounds everywhere. After that ring is removed then close observation of the internal assembly becomes possible. There are only two clipping points holding the case to the internals: one in the front and the other is a kind of hinge clipping in the back. A little of pulling pressure was sufficient to open it. Then I unscrewed the internal screws that hold the black little box with the ball. I opened the box. There are four little rolling encoders inside. They were really dirty. I removed one by one, cleaned them and assembled everything back together. The only drawback was that that outer ring cannot be clipped back, it needs to be glued. I used some small stripes of double face tape that I cut with the scissors. Now the mouse scrolls perfectly, like new.

I used the paper method. Keep moving the mouse around upside down until you hear the little click sound each way. Worked for me.

The fastest way: just roll the mouse upside down on a white clean sheet of common paper, keep the ball on the paper and press the mouse while rolling. You'll see all the dirt left on the paper. Done.
Do it weekly, it takes just 30 secs to prevent dirt from accumulating.

From my experience all you need to do is to hold on to your mighty mouse upside down and flick the rolling button, this will remove the dust stuck in there, do this perodically for good maintanence.

Alcohol and Q-tips. Worked like a charm.

My MM ball has been useless in the downward motion for about 6 months. I knew about turning upside down and using a lint free cloth. This time I took a Q-Tip and saturated the ball with rubbing alcohol and found a lint free cleaning cloth that I use to clean my guns with. After about 5-10 mins of messing with it, it now works again. Again, keeping the mouse upside down while you violently rub the ball with the alcohol soaked cloth is the key.

I wonder if I could use nitro (one of the agents I clean my gun with) on the ball?

I would like to say a big THANK YOU for the article and all the responses, it`s been really helpful for me! I finally used soft LCD Screen Cleaing Tissues and it worked. The liquid contains no alcohol, Butylglycol or Methanol, it provides rapid self-drying and has effective anit-static characteristics, so I hope my scroll-ball to stay free of dust for a while. Moreover, the tissues are very soft, you can get alongside the ball to the inside of the mouse a bit.

hi, thanks for the top advice, i didn't have any alchohol (other than Jack Daniels!) so i used my mrs's nail vanish remover, worked a treat!

All I do is to hold the mouse upside down and while tapping it vigorously, I roll the ball back and forth.
Ok - I lie, I slap the sh*t out of it while rolling the ball back and forth.
It's worked every time for me - maybe one day when it doesnt work, I'll resort to alcohol etc etc, but for now, that works for me.
Slap away, dudes and dudesses.

I just used alchohol and a lens cloth. Worked great! I googled this problem and your site came up. Thanks!!!!

Forget the isopropyl alcohol, Q-tips and wet cloths. Neither worked for me. Instead, use a pre-moistened lens cloth. Available from opticians or drugstores. The small amount of solvent in the cloth is just right and the cleaning effect is immediate. Hold the mouse upside down and rub vigorously for a minute or so. My mouse works like new.

My Mighty Mouse wouldn't scroll down anymore. As no alcohol was handy, I tried with window cleaner. Posting #17 proved very helpful; finally the mouse is working again! Thanks.

I have tried most of the above in my own style. I found when things get really bad, the only way to properly clean the Mighty Mouse is to crack it open and clean it internally (if its out of warranty that is - cracking it open will void the warranty) . I have to agree, the concept 360 scroll is great when it works... But, its almost like turning the old ball type mouse upside down to attract dirt even better! I havent had dirt problems with other standard type scroll wheels on other brand mice. Hopefully maybe Apple will solve this problem with some sort of multitouch mouse? My best solution/reccomendation is to keep your hands and computing environment as clean as possible.

Thank you, Jinn. I think the key, as you describe, is keeping the mouse turned up-side-down while you are using the liquid, whatever it is. Then it does not swill all the gunk down to the the 3rd button; nor does it try to dissolve it. This I did not do. I think I am going to take the plunge and get Apple's bluetooth -- that third button has really got me hooked, and I, also, am addicted to the 360 degree scrolling. I imagine Apple has a patent preventing anyone else using the double-indirect-rolling technique, so I am not going to bother to look elsewhere.

Not having any rubbing alcohol or isopropyl read,y I looked around the house and found some window cleaner. I figured it evaporates quickly and disolves dirt. So I gave it a go. With the warnings above of the third button being damaged, etc, I tried to be careful. The button is still working for now.

So - the cleaning. I turned the mouse upside down, pushed the button in with one thumb nail, and gave it a good spray. Then keeping an eye on the ball for any chunks, and holding one side of the ball down with a lint-free cloth, I started slowly rolling the ball.

After the second application of spray I saw a great big chunk come out. I did another 2 or 3 applications and cleaned off other little bits.

After a week of down-scroll frustration it's finally working again. The damn thing is only 3 months old and I've done the Apple recommended clean several times already because it's locked up. This has gotta be one of the lamest design flaws in what should be a great mouse.

Anyone have a good recommendation for a reliable bluetooth mouse with 360 scroll and 4 buttons? I'm anticipating this thing will have to be disposed of sooner than I'd like.

Is there really no way to recover the 3rd button from the isopropyl treatment? I liberally doused the scroll ball, without turning the mouse upside down, before reading Apple's advice and MacTrash's warning (#8 above). Now my 3rd button will not operate at all. I truly find it an exellent way of going to the desktop, where I do much ofmy filing, so I miss it terribly, and long for some way of bringing it back to life.

My 3rd mouse button had seized as well after using isopropyl. I read here that isopropyl kills it so since I had nothing to loose, I decided to get drastic. I disconected the mouse then holding the mouse the right way up, not upside down, I poured enough isopropyl through the trackball openning so it actually dripped from below. I then moved the trackball around with my hand. A nice chunk of dirt came out. I then turned the mouse upside down and ran the trackball on a piece of corrugated cardboard. The bumps seem to help. To make sure is is dry, I would whack the mouse sideways several times to make sure all fluid moves out then leave for an hour or so to dry occasionally checking the trackball for fluid by spinning it.

My 3rd button has been back for the last 24 hours so I guess it worked.

she didn't dismantle the mighty mouse as much as she could. i had followed those instructions and cleaned my aged mighty mouse regularly for some time, but still the down scroll got stuck.

then i realised yesterday afternoon that you could remove the white part that holds the ball in? if you look closely enough even before that, the four little magnetic black wheels are the ones which does the scrolling (after the ball rolls and touches it, i guess).

i plucked the white bit out, and out comes the ball (which rolled around the floor for a while), and so did the four black wheels with their axles. that's where all the dirt which prevented the downscroll to work! so i cleaned it all out, and put the whole mouse back. finally, it's working perfectly!

i had tried toothpicks, paintbrushes, but nothing works as good as simply dismantling it in totality. ;)

[i didn't take any photos of the process though, was frantically finding the ball, and two of the tiny wheels/axles from the floor. after that, i was being overly cautious so i won't lose them again.]

Ok....all sticky pages and alcohol are very good....only if you have them available right before your eyes. For my defense it's 2:15 am here and im not gonna step out in this cold weather to the nearest CVS for that. I did the dumbest thing ever....but IT worked :)...I used a toothpick, pressed the ball down and placed the tip of the toothpick inside...Roll the ball and you'll see all the crap and black stuff coming out of it...keep doing that until you dont see anything at all, turn it back on and you are good to go.
Im not sure what future effects are gonna be, but for tonight i'll be able to finish my work in peace....

And please, dont press too hard on the ball....Dont want to know what might happen....Now let's croll

I used tequila and it worked fine too

My down scroll wasnt working so, i followed the apple site instructions and wasnt too successful. So, i changed it a tiny bit. I got a damp cloth and wiped gently and then vigoursly. After that, i got a cotton wool pad and wiped the ball again, i felt a difference. When I plugged it in, it worked! Succesful, imo, unless you dont clean it regularly you might end up having to take it apart fully or use alchohol.

Ages back, I published an article on how to take the mighty mouse apart, but it would seem the blog I posted on has disappeared.
I've just uploaded here:


Step by step detailed pix, and I even show how to dismantle the tiny bits.

Isopropyl rubbing alcohol on a cotton q-tip worked for me!

alcohol or any liquid will kill the 3rd button.

Don't make your mouse wet in any degree, the 3rd button is like the one use in the mobile phone button with very thin printed contact.

I do get wet and not the 3rd button not work any more.

I finally need to click the mouse to save the trackball.

I finally got sick of my sticking scroll ball today and cracked it open to give it a proper clean. My question is this... why the hell to do have to 'break' to mouse to get it open? Why do Apple do this to us? The answer of course is that they don't really trust us to do difficult things like taking apart a mouse and cleaning it, they would much rather we just bought a new one!

Much as I love Apple and their products, this aspect of their personality really ticks me off. I am an IT professional, I fix computers all day long, so why can't I get into my mighty mouse without cracking a glued together seal?!?!?

Still, it's a great wee mouse isn't it? ;-)

I might add: don't use sticker remover!! I couldn't find my bottle of pure alcohol, so I opted for the next bottle I saw lying around. Sticker remover did solve the problem, but it seriously scratched the white shiny housing... only afterwards I remembered how much that little Mighty Mouse actually cost me!!

Thanks Nu Tron and Sophie S. I tried the Iso and cotton bud method for my mighty mouse which was a bit dodgy to begin with but has recently become so bad that I cant scroll down. I've had it for about 3 months. I went through 2 buds - 4 ends - and as Sophie says a big black spot rolled round. Now it's even better than when I bought it. No need no void the warranty. Thank you mightily :-))

Thanks NuTron.

I'd add: while you roll the ball, KEEP YOUR EYES on it. You might see a black spot coming out of the hole, and you need to stop immediately, remove the spot and resume. If not, the spot will roll back inside the mouse - and it's too big to simply disolve on the cotton tige.

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'''But there is a cheap and quiet safe way to clean it !!!'''

Tough some people say that you got to open it by bruteforce i prefer to clean it chemicaly.

All You need are :

-some cotton tiges
-some 97% isopropanol alcohol.

'''DON"T USE PARFUMES OR OTHER CLEANING FLUIDS !!!'''

step 1:

dip one end of the cotton tige into the alcohol ,it's got to be real wet.
then put the wet cotton end on the ball and rotate a the cotton tige so that the ball is rotating too.
after a while you will see how some dirt is appearing on the ball ,if possible try to remove this dirt from the surface of the ball.
you should rotate the ball in differnt directions.

step 2:

dip the other end of the tige into the alcohol and do the same as in step 1 but this time don't rotate the cotton tige ,just move it above the ball away in all directions once.this will bring out very nasty dirt from inside of the trackball case.
while you are performing this step you might feel is hanging.don't worry about that.

step 3:

after step 2 you should dry the ball by rolling the ball above your pant or a piece of dry tissue and test weather if it works or not.
mind that while the ball is wet it behaves differently from dry state.
so it needs a little try to find out when it's clean..

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Distilled water does conduct electricity. In fact, a grat many chemical and scientific work that involes electroylsis uses distilled water as the solvent. A batter means of cleaning the ball is to dab on some isopropyll alcohol and spin the ball a bit. The alcohol will clean the ball and also evaporate many, many times faster than any water.

Cranking the mouse open was my last resort. So I prefered to completely immerse the mouse (of course while it is not connected) in distilled water and roll the ball a few times in the water. Then I left it in a warm place to dry completely for 2 days. It now works like a charm. If you are prepared to take the risk (this procedure may damage the mouse in very rare cases, distilled water does not conduct electricity and in theory leaves no traces behind when it dries completely) this procedure is much easier than taking the mouse apart and may be much more safe.