Some projects keep surprising me with their “solutions,” and this is one of those cases. A proposal under review by developers from GNOME and Mozilla could change how middle-mouse-button paste behaves on Linux and other Unix-like systems.
The discussions, visible in Mozilla’s Phabricator revision D277804 and a linked GNOME gsettings-desktop-schemas merge request, focus on disabling the traditional primary selection paste by default.
Mozilla proposes changing the default behavior of the Firefox browser on Unix builds so that pressing the middle mouse button no longer pastes text by default. The author of the revision frames the current behavior as a source of confusion and accidental pastes, especially when users press the middle button without expecting the clipboard contents to be inserted into text fields.
Yet one more reason why Gnome fucking sucks, however I don’t understand why Mozilla is so determined to sink their own boat lately.
I think the open in new tab behavior/ do the scroll thing makes more sense for the middle click.
Okay. I could spend hours and hours criticising GNOME for a lot of things, but this is not one of them. It is not removing functionality, as the article implies; as others here highlighted, it’s simply changing a default. That’s completely fine.
No default gnome app will be able to toggle that default. You can hack it in gsettings.
And worse, the fact there is a setting means that only the default will be tested. The feature will slowly but surely bitrot. In a few years we’ll see a proposal to remove it entirely. This is how software development works.
People in the thread say the proposal is to change the default and add a toggle to switch it to the mouse settings
I’m going to continue using gnome
What’s with all the complaints here?
New users expect middle click to bring up an auto-scroll widget instead of pasting by default.
You can set up your computer how ever you want.
Want auto-scroll? Set it to auto-scroll.
Want paste? Set it to paste.
The first thing you do on a new system is set up the computer how you want.
No one’s taking anything away from you.
agreed. and middle click being paste has to be one of the stupidest defaults. I understand people use it, and whatever, everyone has their own workflow, but now middle click to drag doesn’t work and you’ve confused everyone since now it’s different everywhere.
The question though is who gets their preference as the default, and who has to reconfigure stuff
In this case they’re giving the default to new users and letting X fans reconfigure which seems right to me.
I understand how useful it is to quickly paste selected text, and have used it frequently, but I finally had enough of it after the thousandth time accidentally pasting private information or random garbage into a new tab search, discord chats, or the middle of my code without realizing it…
I think their proposal to make it a toggle that is off by default is the best solution. A lot more people are adopting Linux now and this will be one less point of friction for the new user experience coming from Windows, thus making it more likely they’ll stick with the OS, and old users who are setting up a fresh install will just switch it back to the previous behavior as they configure their system, and never think about it again.
So anyway, not long ago I went searching for a way to disable it system-wide (since KDE on X11 doesn’t offer any toggle for it, at least for me) and the best solution I found is this little program that clears the middle-click selection clipboard any time you middle click so you never paste anything. Works like a charm for me.
https://github.com/milaq/XMousePasteBlockCan I just say what the fuck?
Was just talking to another Linux user about a week or so ago about how useful the middle click paste is. I’ll be pissed if I ever do a new install and have to figure out how to make the thing work the way it always has in the past.
You’re gonna have to tick a checkbox. The pain
TBH, I’ve seen this cause more confusion in people than being considered helpful. Ctrl+V/Cmd+V are universally understood and behave predictably. Middle mouse click not so much. (Did you know there are two clipboards on Linux and MMB only pastes from one of them?)
but it’s quite intuitive to realize what it does
it isn’t if you’ve copied from an empty field by accident, or if your clipboard is empty.
interesting; how does one copy from an empty field by accidnet? /geniunely curious and oblivious
Since copy on highlight is default you literally just have to accidentally drag your mouse cursor in a terminal window and boom, you’ve copied empty text. It’s incredibly annoying.
ah i have had that happen before lol. it does copy spaces but it doesn’t overwrite your main clipboard so i don’t have qualms about it. every app you’d expect to support middle-mouse drag except notepad/gedit/kwrite/etc supports it instead of pasting unless you use chromium without the relevant extension or remain static over a textbox.
I actually did not know there are two clipboards. Why/how do they work?
You select the text and it magically is in this second (or actually first) clipboard. I have a habit of selecting the text I’m reading, so this selection is always something, and sometimes contains sensitive data. There were countless of situations when I was composing a long message, scrolling it and accidentally, not even noticing (it’s long already), pasted the contents. I hate this ‘feature’ and in general don’t understand who wants it and why. Disabling it would be a huge improvement for everyone, as those who need it usually know they need it, so there’s no difficulty in enabling it back.
They’re called “selections”, the main ones being
PRIMARYandCLIPBOARD, and it’s effectively a form of IPC mediated by X. When you select something, that goes into thePRIMARYselection, while when you copy something, it goes into bothPRIMARYandCLIPBOARD.The problem is that “middle mouse click” isn’t actually paste, it’s “insert primary selection”. As long as they’re in sync you won’t notice any issue (Ctrl+V and MMB will both insert the same content), as soon as they’re out of sync you’re suddenly exposed to an implementation detail of the X11 protocol.
And it’s easy to go out of sync, simply copy something and then select unrelated text, now Ctrl+V and MMB will output different things. It can be useful, e.g. if you’re having to copy a bunch of different pieces of text from one window to another, you can simply select and MMB, no keyboard needed, but it’s not intuitive IMO, and conflicts with modern usage of the middle mouse button (Get it wrong when trying to open a link in a new tab and you’ll dump whatever text you last selected into the site instantly)
Also, these selections aren’t a thing under Wayland, it’s been re-implemented as a normal paste operation there. The question is actually whether the middle mouse button should be treated like any other mouse button or have this special behaviour by default. My vote is to expose it via the mouse settings applet and leave it up to users, like any other special mouse button.
A few years ago when I tried switching, this drove me nuts. It’s so unintuitive coming from Windows where I use middle mouse all the time in browsers.
What does it do in windows, when you use it in a text field? I use this for pasting selected text from the terminal all the time, so i am quite fond of the current behaviour.
In VSCode, for instance, the middle mouse button adds extra cursors. Which is very annoying if it also pastes.
I use Ctrl+Shift+Arrow Up/Down for multiple cursors. Maybe because I’m already long time Linux user and use MMB to paste selected text.
I’m pretty sure people who use MMB do know that it uses one of the two clipboards in Linux. Hence the reason they use it.
That being said, I find baffling that they are not setting this as an optional feature but just outright disabling it.
They are setting this as an optional feature. They are not just disabling it.
Not true, if there is no user visible setting for it. Changing a hidden gsetting via a command line is essentially removing it since it will likely bitrot and then be fully removed in a few years.
It is currently a hidden setting in Firefox’s about:config. They are removing it from there and no longer controlling it within Firefox itself so it will follow the setting set in you window manager (probably have the wrong term here, haven’t had my coffee yet), which is (generally) not hidden and available through a settings GUI. So you won’t have a web browser having different functionality than elsewhere on your machine.
If it’s hidden at that point, blame the window manager/desktop environment/whatever it’s called.
I don’t use Gnome, but they hate to expose settings in general it seems and like to dumb down everything (and that is why I don’t use it). The issue here is that the you need KDE, Sway, Niri, Xfce, etc all to implement a setting for this. Middle mouse paste is useful and has been standard on Unix-likes for decades. There is literally no reason to remove it.
Literally none. It has never caused confusion or accidental pastes of private information into web browsers.
There are two clipboards in X11 - but MMB pastes from the selection not the clipboard. I have never heard of the other clipboard being used for anything and I first heard of this more than 30 years ago. (I don’t know what wayland does about clipboards, butiit acts live X11)
It’s a travesty it’s a solely X11 thing and that it wasn’t adopted by other operating systems. Back in the day when I was doing a back office job one of the main apps ran on Solaris via what looked like some weird X11 to Windows forwarding app. Clipboard was shared between host and remote app so it was very obvious to see how much of a productivity gain middle-click paste was. Regretfully that’s the only app they managed to retire since I left. Mainframe one is still going strong.
Middle mouse paste was great on true 3 button mice. It became a liability with the invention of the mouse wheel, which made it a total crapshoot to try to click that damn button without rolling the wheel at the same time. It’s a classic case of overloaded functionality.
Like imagine if cars put the accelerator into the steering wheel, so you had to press the steering wheel down to accelerate. Everyone would hate it and it would be a safety nightmare. We put up with things on computers that we never would in other areas of life.
I can’t remember ever having an issue with the middle button also being the wheel.
Some mouses have scroll wheels that click too easily. So when you scroll, you paste. In my collection of mouses the Logitech ones are fine, gaming mouses are the worst, and the one Microsoft mouse has no way to do a middle click
I can’t remember the last time I’ve ever wanted to click the middle mouse button. The experience of having done so once or twice was bad enough to get me to rebind the action to something else.
It’s so interesting how different people’s approaches are to doing just about everything. Keeps things interesting, I guess. I still don’t get the wheel/middle-button issue. Unless it’s my using cheap as hell mouses that aren’t super sensitive. I’m not even talking about using the middle wheel the correct way (😇) but even remapped to something else, I’ve never had that issue.
Nowadays I use a trackpad for almost everything. I do use a mouse at work but then I mostly use keyboard shortcuts for everything I can (Excel really flies when you know some keyboard shortcuts).
Middle mouse button opens links in a new tab is most browsers. I use it constantly.
It’s used in lots of games.
In autocad middle mouse is used to pan around the screen, I use it constantly there as well.
Ahhh. I use command-click to open in new tabs.
I haven’t played a game that uses the mouse in several years. I mostly play Roguelikes such as NetHack, DCSS, or Caves of Qud using keyboard controls only, or console games with a controller.
I have never used a CAD program though sometimes I’ve thought about it.
Mozilla and Gnome
What the fuck guys. Are you for real?This is what you spend your time on?
Gnome also spends time making posts bashing on developers who create alternative DEs, and mozilla also spends time thinking about how to put more ai in firefox
System76 spent their time spreading slander about Gnome and being shitty to upstream, just FYI
That’s good to know. So far I haven’t seen the opposite, but maybe the gnome post got more attention because they’re more popular.
One dev without any go-ahead from Gnome did.
And let’s not forget System76 employees, as well as System76 themselves, have done the exact same thing.
I rechecked it, and, indeed, it’s from a single dev. The fact that it was from blogs.gnome.org made me think it was a publication in the name of all the gnome foundation
Not mentioned in the OP is that both discussions include a setting to enable middle mouse button paste for those who want it; it will just be off by default. Everyone calm down.
Is in bugtracker or in mr? If not please link.
Linked from the Linuxiac post:
Mozilla’s Phabricator revision D277804
The proposed change just stops setting middlemouse.paste to true by default, and there are comments suggesting tying it to GTK’s corresponding preference.
GNOME merge request: Disable primary-paste by default
People that know about this functionality and really love this functionality can easily override the setting.
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-enable-primary-paste true
“Other Unix-like”, do they mean like open/free/netBSD and that class? Because macos does not have that, right? Only some terminals emulate that behaviour by overwriting the normal clipboard, making it very hard to switch between them.
Yes, let’s keep taking features away. 🙄
This is actually an accessibility issue. It’s often much easier for me to use middle click paste than other copy and paste methods. But as always those numbnuts just think about streamlining everything.
There should be real hotkey editing in the settings or it should respect the OS hotkey settings. As of now the only way to toggle this is by diving into about config and finding the flag.
Would solve other problems too, like ctrl+pgup/down swapping tabs, but it also is used for things like changing spreadsheet tabs.
Making a feature optional is not taking it away
It is, but slower.
But if it off by default, it’s going to slowly rot and then they’ll just remove it altogether.
GNOME has plenty of features that are off by default and still exist. The merge request also mentions that redhat would 100% recieve complaints from paying customers if it was removed. Theyre very clearly aware that people still want this feature. You’re just assuming the worst.
Good choice I think, way too sensitive to just work like that
Did you know that ShitDows doesnt support middle mouse button for anything? XD it opens the start menu like all the time
No opening in new tab or closing tabs
Lets just make every OS the exact same so that we don’t “confuse the users.” That will work out so well.
I don’t know how you could possibly look at Gnome and think they’re trying to be the same as every other OS.
They’re seemingly the only one with the balls to move away from the WinUX way of doing things.
Finally! Middle click paste annoyed me so much when I first started using Linux, it should not be on by default imo.
