Anyone who edits photos or video will know the routine: one hand on the mouse, the other hovering over the keyboard, and possibly a separate control deck or editing console somewhere on the desk too. Super Mouse is a new device that aims to pull all of that under one hand by building a 3.1-inch touch display into the body of a mouse.

The 720 x 720 touchscreen has five modes: a control panel with up to 16 shortcuts on the home screen, a multi-touch trackpad, a digital keyboard, brightness and volume sliders, and a Google Calendar view. The key detail is that the layout changes automatically depending on which app is active, so the controls you see in your editing software are different from those in a spreadsheet or browser.

Hyper Keys and gyro control

Alongside the display are two physical Hyper Keys next to the scroll wheel, which can be set to trigger any shortcut, macro or multi-step workflow. Super Mouse also includes gyro control, so tilting or moving the mouse can advance slides or scrub through media.

That last feature is the one that interests us most. The makers give the example of a video editor scrubbing the timeline with gyro motion and switching tools on the Hyper Keys, without needing a separate control deck. For photographers, having brush sizes, presets or flagging shortcuts on a screen under your hand could speed up a culling or retouching session.

Flow app and on-device voice-to-text

Everything is configured through the Flow desktop app, which lets you assign shortcuts and macros to any application, including ones it doesn’t already recognise. Profiles for work, gaming or editing switch automatically with the active app, and Rapid Tasks let you capture a multi-step action, such as opening an app, silencing notifications and starting a timer, and fire it with a single press.

There are also onboard microphones for voice-to-text, which the makers say is processed locally on the device and in the Flow app, with nothing uploaded.

Whether a touchscreen mouse can replace a dedicated editing console is something we’d want to test for ourselves, but it’s an interesting take on a device that has barely changed in decades.

Super Mouse specifications

Super Mouse price and availability

Super Mouse is currently live on Kickstarter. Pricing and shipping dates have yet to be confirmed. As with any crowdfunded product, backing a campaign isn’t the same as buying from a retailer, so check the campaign details before pledging.