If you’ve ever owned an Apple Mighty Mouse for an extended period of time, there’s no doubt you’ll have experienced the annoyance of the scroll ball refusing to respond. This mainly effects the downward scrolling, which is even more frustrating as it’s probably the most used movement (hmmm maybe that’s why it stops working?) Anyway, the simple reason for all of this is a build up of gunk on the tiny axis scroll pins. Now Apple didn’t make it easy to get into these mice, they’ve glued a bezel on the bottom that needs to be carefully removed before you can get into it.

What you will need

Small Philips Screwdriver

Small blade (be very careful)

Cleaning alcohol

Double sided sticky tape

Open up

1. The first part is the toughest, getting that damn bezel off! Some are easier than others though. Apple thought it’d be a good idea to glue it on at ten various points (pictured below) Thanks, Apple.

I found it best to start from the corner where the cable comes in at the front (pictured below). I managed to slide my knife in and work an opening. Be very patient, do not try and gouge the bezel off you’ll end up either snapping it, or injuring yourself. Take your time and try and work the blade in at the glue points, eventually you should be able to crack it off.

2. Once the bezel is off it gets a bit easier, next it’s simply matter of levering the inner part of the mouse out from the top casing. If you look carefully you will see two points where the mouse is clipped to swivel joints (pictured below). Gently lever the inner part out and it should come free quite easily.

2. Now you’re in, be careful as there are two ribbon cables that don’t leave much room to maneuver (pictured below). These are held in by push down clips. Gently pry them up with your knife and the cables will come out freely.

3. Once the two halves are seperated, use your screwdriver to remove the 3 screws holding the Scroll ball assembley in place (pictured below).

4. Once removed it gets a bit fiddly, unclip the white cap that encompasses the Scroll ball with your knife (pictured below). Everything will probably fall out so make sure you keep an eye out of for the four roller pins. It’s a good idea to take note of the pin arrangement at this point, handy for refitting.

5. These are the culprits of your Scrolling nightmare (highlighted below). The four pins that pick up the Scroll ball’s movements and translate them into a digital signal. They do this using tiny magnets on the end of each one, which are picked up by four tiny sensors. The magnets make it fiddly to put it all back together as they just love jumping at each other! Anyway, clean all the gunk off the pins, there’s usually bit of fluff wrapped around in the crevices, I found using a bit of alcohol (white spirits for instance) was a great way of getting them looking new.

6. The hole in the top case is quite often filled with gunk aswell. Make sure you give that the once over before refitting as it’d make the whole process a bit pointless otherwise

7. Once you’re all done, refit everything in reverse order (ye ye always the case). Once you get to the final part of the jigsaw, namely the bezel, you don’t really want to glue it back on because chances are you’re going to need to clean the thing again in a couple of months. The solution I’ve always used is to dot some little squares of strong double sided tape around most of the glue points. This holds the bezel on nice and firm, but still makes it fairly easy to remove in the future.

Ok so there we have it, a guide to cleaning your Apple Mighty Mouse. Even though I used the Wired version for this guide, it’s exactly the same process for the Wireless version, all that’s different is you need to take the batteries out first! Enjoy.