Though theyβre commonly called βdrawing tablets,β Wacom pen tablets are also excellent mouse replacements that can be utilized for plenty of tasks other than drawing β including writing.
This will be a guide to how to set up the Wacom Intuos β or any Wacom tablet with ExpressKey buttons, or any Wacom tablet paired with an ExpressKey Remote β as a powerful productivity aid for noveling, freelancing, coding, teaching online, or just general office work.
Before writing for Wacomβs blog was even on my radar, I used an Intuos Pen & Touch tablet as a full-time mouse replacement for four years. I now use a Wacom Cintiq 16 for art, and a Logitech gaming mouse for everything else. The Cintiq is the best art tool Iβve ever used, but I recently realized I miss using the flat tablet for other work. This was partially because the interface was more efficient, but it was also psychological: what do we associate more with writing than pens? Just using it, even for ordinary articles, seemed to put me in more of a creative mode than using a mouse and keyboard.
Yes, holding a pen for several hours on end takes some getting used to. Your hand might be sore for the first few days. And youβll want to practice tucking it into your thumb crease while you type to make the switch between navigating and writing faster. But once youβre fluid with it, itβs more efficient, ergonomic, and fun than a mouse. Itβs very satisfying to scroll by hovering and flicking your pen, highlighting text the way you would in a book, physically dragging paragraphs down the page to reorder them, and cutting and pasting with one tap of a button.
If youβre an artist as well, it also helps you keep in practice holding and making fine movements with a tablet pen even when youβre not drawing. I currently have a Wacom Intuos Small, so in this article, Iβll unbox it and recreate my old setup.
The small Wacom Intuos retails for under $100, so if youβre interested in trying a tablet, itβs not a huge investment for both a mouse alternative and a capable drawing tool. Figuring out what size tablet you need can be tough, but the small is perfect for this purpose. Itβs the size of a mouse pad, but is much more precise than a mouse, so you have more room to move in the same area. Even with a dual-monitor setup like mine, it works great.
Tip: If you look up any guide to setting up a tablet for drawing, theyβll tell you to put it in front of your keyboard so itβs also directly in front of the monitor, not to the side like a mousepad. But for writing, feel free to do the opposite.
Setting up your tablet preferences
Iβll walk you through the configuration process as if youβve never used a tablet before, because maybe some people reading this wonβt have. If youβre experienced with them, some of this will seem redundant β but some of the other tips and shortcuts might still be useful.
Once youβve installed the universal driver from our website, the Wacom Intuos is essentially plug-and-play. Move the pen around on the tablet, and it should move your mouse!
Once youβve installed the driver, open Wacom Tablet Properties. For anyone who hasnβt used it, thereβs a lot more than meets the eye here. When you install it, it automatically creates profiles for your installed image editing programs β or the big ones, at least β and everything else is covered under All Other.
Letβs punch in some foundational settings, starting with Mapping.
Weβll leave it on Pen Mode, despite using it as a mouse. You want to get used to mentally mapping your tablet to the elements on your screen, and Pen Mode is far more precise anyway.
If youβre using one monitor, turn on Force Proportions to match your tabletβs aspect ratio to your screenβs. If youβre using two monitors, leave this off or itβll reduce your tabletβs active area to a tiny sliver. You might need it for one type of program, but weβll get to that later.
Next, Pen settings.
Set the lower button to middle-click instead of its default scroll. When itβs on scroll mode, you have to drag the pen across the tablet to scroll up and down. If you set it to middle-click, you can simply click once and navigate by hovering. Middle click also lets you quickly open and close Chrome tabs, and everything else clicking the scroll wheel does in other programs.
Software settings
For this step, weβll be adding a writing program and a browser.
Clicking the + brings up a list of a list of all the programs you currently have open, so you can create a separate mapping profile and shortcuts for each one.
I do my fiction writing in Scrivener and my article writing in a Google Docs desktop app, with different settings for each, but for simplicityβs sake, and because so many people just use it as their default writing program, Iβll demonstrate with MS Word.
Those four buttons on your Intuos, FYI, are called ExpressKeys, and any number of program or navigation functions can be assigned to them. For writing, weβll do keyboard shortcuts. For the top left one, go to Keyboard > Keystroke, and in the popup window, hit Ctrl-X in the top field and name it Cut in the bottom one.
Keep adding basic shortcuts until you have the setup shown here. Note that one keyβs still on default: Since cut, copy, and paste cover my basic editing needs, Iβm left with a free space. Iβll use it to create a shortcut menu for my common formatting functions.
So, letβs pop over to On-Screen Controls. As youβll see, this lets you create infinite toolbars. Theyβre program-independent, so you can create one general βwritingβ one to use the same shortcuts across different programs.
There are two types of menu: Grids and Radials, and grids come in horizontal, vertical, or square. Iβll make a new single-column vertical grid for all my common shortcuts in order of use β Ctrl-I, Ctrl-E, Ctrl-K, Ctrl-B β and creatively call it βWriting,β and Iβll assign it to the final ExpressKey.
Menus normally disappear after you select an option, but you can use the pin icon to make it a permanent toolbar. From now on, Iβll stick mine to the margin of whatever Iβm working on.
Tip: If youβre using Windows 10, uncheck βUse Windows Inkβ in the Mapping panel for all your programs (other than Adobe Photoshop), or else youβll get that infuriating Handwriting popup every time you place your cursor.
If that still doesnβt work, you can turn the box alone off through Windows by searching for βPen & Windows Inkβ settings in the taskbar, and changing this one from βWhen the keyboard isnβt attachedβ to βOnly in tablet mode.β
Browser settings
Weβre going to do one thing different here. Thereβs one capability thatβs still missing: zoom. The Wacom Intuos small doesnβt have any equivalent to a mouseβs scroll wheel. Some other Wacom products have a touch ring that can be programmed to serve that function β the Wacom Intuos Pro and ExpressKey Remote, for example β but not this one.
But donβt worry, the Intuos has a workaround. An inelegant one, Iβll admit, but itβs better than switching back to the mouse every time you need a closer look at something.
Besides image editing programs, Chrome is probably where I need to zoom in the most for things like Google Maps. Since I donβt often cut when browsing the web, and I can just use Ctrl-X when I do, Iβll switch the first ExpressKey from Ctrl-X to Navigation > Pan/Zoom.
General impressions of the Wacom Intuos as a writing tool
The Wacom Intuos is an even better mouse replacement than the 2013 Pen & Touch was. The P&T had a smooth plastic surface that constantly reminded you that you were using a computer peripheral, while the current Wacom tablets have a rubbery textured surface that genuinely makes it feel like youβre somehow using a ballpoint pen on a notebook to control your computer.
But my favorite feature is the Bluetooth connectivity. On the bluetooth-enabled Intuos tablets, once the tabletβs charged via cable you can connect it wirelessly and regain the use of your USB port. This allows a lot more freedom of movement; I can slide it across the desk from one monitor to the other if I want to switch to another project on a different screen without messing with the cable, or when I need the mouse for a game, I can simply turn the tablet off and set it aside.
Itβs also easy to slip into a backpack with my laptop to use outside at a coffee shop, bookstore, or while traveling. It can be charged with any Micro-USB cable, so if you connect it via Bluetooth, you can even charge it using a wall charger. It takes a few hours to charge, but has a battery life of fifteen hours.
All of this functionality means Iβm going back to using the Wacom Intuos daily for my writing.
Iβll still be using the keyboard for actually typing words, but with a Wacom Intuos instead of a mouse I can be more efficient and ergonomic so my focus can be on those words and not wrangling technology!
About the author
Cameron βC.S.β Jones is a West-Philly-based writer and illustrator whoβs been contributing to Wacom for three years now. You can see more of his work, including most of his contributions to this blog, at thecsjones.com, or follow him on Instagram or Twitter.