IN THIS ARTICLE
A mouse switch is sold on one number: how many million clicks it is rated for. Sometimes, well short of that number, one press starts to register as two. The rating counted presses. Double-clicking comes from what happens to two small pieces of metal along the way.
The short answer: inside a mechanical micro switch, two metal contacts touch to make the click signal. They bounce when they meet, and as the surfaces wear and oxidize the signal gets noisier, until the mouse reads one press as two. A switch that senses the press with light or a magnet has no contacts to wear, which is the idea behind the MagOptic Switch (optical + Hall effect / magnetic switch) in the Keychron G6 HE.
The switch specs below come from our G6 HE and MagOptic pages, checked October 27, 2026. The background on contact bounce comes from electronics application notes and reference material. We did not run our own tests for this article.
The short version
- Double-clicking is a signal problem: the click you feel comes from a spring, the click the computer sees comes from the contacts, and contact wear is the usual way a switch ages into double-clicks.
- Debounce only buys time: a longer window hides a longer bounce, and it can add up to that many milliseconds to every click.
- Non-contact detection removes the contacts that wear: optical and Hall effect switches read the press without metal contacts, so there are no metal contacts to bounce or wear in the signal path. The mechanical click can stay.
Why a mechanical micro switch starts to double-click
Under each main button sits a micro switch. Your finger pushes a plunger, the plunger bends a metal leaf spring, and the spring snaps. That snap is the click you feel and hear.
The tip of that same spring carries a metal contact. When the spring snaps, the contact lands on a second, fixed contact and closes a circuit. That closed circuit is the click the mouse reads. One part does two jobs: it makes the feel, and it makes the signal.
The trouble starts at the moment the two contacts meet. Metal on metal does not settle instantly. The contacts rebound a few times before they rest, so the circuit opens and closes several times in one press. Electronics application notes put that bounce in the hundreds of microseconds, and the mouse firmware deals with it by waiting a few milliseconds and ignoring the chatter. That wait is the debounce window.
An illustration of the mechanism, not an oscilloscope capture. Bounce lengths and the window are schematic.
Now add a few million presses. The contact surfaces wear, and a thin film of oxide can build up on them. A worn or filmed contact makes a noisier signal: more chatter, and chatter that can run past the debounce window. Once it does, the firmware reads the gap as a release and the next closure as a new press. That second press is your double-click, and it comes from the contacts, not from the spring.
The spec sheet says a click lifespan rating. On your desk it means the switch is built to survive that many presses in a test. It says nothing about how clean the signal stays on the way there.
Rule of thumb: if one button double-clicks and the others are fine, suspect that button's contacts before you suspect your software.
What the mouse debounce time actually does
Debounce is a wait. After the first closure, the firmware ignores every further change on that button for a set number of milliseconds, then accepts the state it finds. A longer wait swallows a longer bounce. It also delays every click by up to that many milliseconds, which is why mice do not simply set it to a huge value.
On supported Keychron mice you can set that wait yourself. In the Keychron Launcher web app, opened in the latest Chrome, Opera or Edge with the mouse connected by cable or, on models that support it, the 2.4 GHz receiver, go to Advanced and then Debounce Time. The slider runs from 0 to 20 ms in 1 ms steps. Basic mode applies one value to every button. Advanced mode, on select mice, lets you give each button its own value. The steps are in our guide to setting mouse debounce time on Launcher.
Debounce treats the symptom at the cost of latency, and only while the bounce stays shorter than the window. As the contacts wear, the window may need to grow.
Rule of thumb: raise the mouse debounce time 1 ms at a time and stop at the first value where the double-clicks disappear.
What a non-contact switch changes
A non-contact switch keeps the press and removes the circuit. The button still moves, and a leaf spring can still snap, as it does in MagOptic, but no metal contact closes to make the signal. Something else reads the position of the moving part.
There are several ways to do that. An optical switch has a light beam that the moving part blocks or clears, and a light sensor reads the press at one point. A Hall effect switch has a magnet that moves with the button and a Hall sensor that measures its field, so the mouse knows how far the button has travelled along the whole press. TMR and inductive sensing are two more ways to read position without contacts. Our hall effect mouse explainer walks through the magnet and sensor in detail.
A simplified illustration of the detection principle, not a drawing of any product's parts.
They share the part that matters here. With no contacts in the signal path, there is nothing to bounce, so the contact wear that drives a micro switch toward double-clicks is not in the signal path.
The feel is a separate choice. A click can come from a physical leaf spring, as in a classic micro switch, or from a motor that plays a short pulse, which is what a haptic mouse does. Non-contact detection works with either. The optical vs magnetic mouse switch guide compares the sensing methods side by side.
If you remember one thing: the sensor decides how the click is counted, and the spring, or the motor, decides how it feels. Ask about both.
What it means on your desk
The numbers below belong to the one Keychron mouse with the MagOptic switch today.
| G6 HE with MagOptic | Value | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Click detection | Optical Mode or Magnetic Mode, no metal contacts | No metal contacts to bounce or wear in the signal path |
| Total click travel | 0.65 mm ± 0.07 mm | The whole press, from rest to bottom |
| Adjustable actuation point | Magnetic Mode, set in Launcher | Where inside that press the click counts |
| Average click latency, 8K | 0.188 ms wired, 0.382 ms over 2.4 GHz | Keychron's figure, measured with professional latency testing equipment, for the whole mouse in 8K mode |
| Click lifespan target | 100 million clicks | The design target for the switch, written as a target |
The spec sheet says non-contact. On your desk it means there are no metal contacts in the signal path to bounce or wear. The leaf spring still moves, and Keychron writes the lifespan as a target rather than a promise.
How Keychron does it: MagOptic
The MagOptic Switch (optical + Hall effect / magnetic switch) is Keychron's own design, and it is the switch under the main buttons of the Keychron G6 HE. It has two modes, and you pick one in the Keychron Launcher web app.
In Optical Mode the press is read with light, and the click point is not adjustable. Keychron describes it as working like a traditional optical mouse switch: fast, reliable and non-contact, with a familiar crisp click. In Magnetic Mode a Hall sensor reads the press, which is what makes the actuation point adjustable and lets you turn on Rapid Trigger. In that mode the metal leaf spring is only responsible for the feel, and detection is handled entirely by Hall sensing.
The leaf spring is the point. Our product team designed the feel from the start to match the mechanical micro switch you already use, so the mouse clicks the way you expect while the contacts that used to age are not there. Day one feels like a micro switch. The difference is built for the years of presses after it.
The G6 HE comes in a Swappable Battery Version and a Built-in Battery Version, and both are listed with the MagOptic switch. Settings saved to the mouse in Launcher travel with it to another computer.
Rule of thumb: if you do not need a custom click point, Optical Mode is enough. Move to Magnetic Mode when you want to set your own.
Who should care, and who should not
You should care if you have already retired a mouse for double-clicking, or if you click for a living. Editors, spreadsheet users and anyone who plays click-heavy games put the most presses on the same two contacts and meet the wear curve first. If you also like to tune when a click fires, Magnetic Mode gives you that on top.
You can skip it if your current mouse clicks cleanly and you never open a settings app. A good mechanical micro switch does its job for a long time, and on day one you would not feel a difference. The non-contact design pays off over years of presses.
FAQ
Is zero double-click real?
Keychron's own wording is more careful than zero. It says both MagOptic modes use non-contact trigger detection, which reduces the physical wear that can cause aging and double-click issues in traditional mechanical micro switches. There are no contacts to bounce or oxidize, so the mechanism behind a classic double-click is absent. The switch still has moving parts and a 100 million click lifespan target, so read it as the known cause removed rather than a lifetime promise for any single unit.
How do I tell whether the switch or a setting is causing my double-clicks?
Check the double-click speed setting in your operating system first, then test the mouse in a plain text editor and, if you can, on a second computer. If the extra clicks follow the mouse and stay on the same button, the contacts are the likely cause. On supported Keychron mice, raising the debounce time in Launcher is a quick test: if a few extra milliseconds make the doubles vanish, you were looking at bounce.
Does a MagOptic switch feel different from a normal mouse click?
It is designed to feel the same. A metal leaf spring still snaps under the button, so you get a mechanical click. Keychron describes Optical Mode as a familiar crisp click and Magnetic Mode as keeping a defined clicky mechanical-style feel. What changes is only how the press is detected: by light in Optical Mode, by a Hall sensor in Magnetic Mode.
Will a longer mouse debounce time make my mouse slower?
A little, by design. The wait is the point, and the click can be confirmed up to that many milliseconds later. On Keychron mice with the setting, the slider tops out at 20 ms, so pick the smallest value that stops the double-clicks and leave it there.
References & Citations
- MagOptic Optical Mode and Magnetic Mode, non-contact detection, no contact bounce, leaf spring for feel, and Keychron's wording on aging double-click issues. (Keychron MagOptic switch page)
- G6 HE total click travel, click latency, 100 million click lifespan target, Launcher settings and the two versions. (Keychron G6 HE product page)
- Mouse debounce time in Launcher on supported Keychron mice: 0 to 20 ms in 1 ms steps, basic and per-button modes. (How to set mouse debounce time on Launcher)
- How a Hall effect mouse switch reads a press with a magnet and a sensor. (Keychron, hall effect mouse explained)
- Mechanical switch contacts can bounce for hundreds of microseconds, and a debounce delay is added so the extra edges are ignored. (Texas Instruments, Debounce a Switch (SCEA094))
- Why contacts bounce when they close and how firmware debounce re-checks the switch after a short delay. (Pico Technology, switch bounce and debounce)
- Oxide films and surface roughness on switch contacts raise contact resistance and make contacts noisy. (Wikipedia, Switch (contact resistance and wetting current))