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.
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
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?)
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
This article is dogshit. Its clearly written to make it sound like theyre completely getting rid of it to get people pissed off at GNOME and Mozilla. The GNOME merge request has “by default” in the title, so its pretty damn obvious they’re not getting rid of it completely.
As I explained elsewhere there is no official app to change this setting. Users can hack their gsettings.
Support for middle-paste will slowly but surely bitrot and eventually be removed.
They explicitly mention the plan to add a toggle in gnome settings in the merge request.
As I explained elsewhere there is no official app to change this setting
You’re skipping a step here, first a decision needs to be made on whether or not the default will change, then and only then can they decide whether it’s worth adding something like a toggle to the mouse settings panel, which would be trivial btw.
They’re still doing something bad: changing the status quo. They’re turning our system into something different because new users want it to be like another system. Maybe they ought to use that other system instead? Or mac os which is kind of a hybrid concept.
Are we going to have to endure the mess of directories they get to enjoy in windows as well so users don’t feel lost? What other convenience should we forfeit and hide at the bottom of a menu because it frigtens the noobs?
Linux isn’t windows, it’s different, things are different, learn something different, or use something else.
Idk how you could look at GNOME and say its trying to act more like Windows. They have their own particular idea of what a desktop should be, and that might not include middle mouse pasting. Defaults shouldnt stay the default just because they’ve always been. Devs should be able to have discussions about changing things without people accusing them of trying to destroy Linux.
Edit: I also want to point out that a huge number of Linux users dont even know this is a feature (some of which you can see in this thread). This change will add an entry in the settings for it, which very well might lead to MORE people using it. I think disabled is the correct default for something as potentially dangerous as dumping your most recently highlighted text.
They’re still doing something bad: changing the status quo.
I’ll be the nitpicker and point out that changing the status quo doesn’t necessarily need to be a bad thing. Every good thing ever has basically been a change from the status quo. 🤷♂️
Well, true, that was probably poorly worded.
Perhaps a bit. But I agree with your sentiment besides that. Hopefully we won’t have “the year of the Linux Desktop” as some sort of hard ambition, where we will reach a point where every OS just conforms and converges to the same paradigms, like we basically have on our phones by now.
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.
Wait… middle mouse button pastes? I’ve been using Linux for two years and that is news to me. To be honest, that sounds like more trouble than it’s worth to be on by default. Maybe just make it an option.
I find it very useful, and it conflicts with normal copy paste very rarely. There are two clipboards, one is filled with latest highlighted, and the other with latest Ctrl+C:ed. Middle click pastes from the first, Ctrl+V from the second. This makes you able to copy two things at once: ctrl+c something first, highlight something else second, paste in any order. The confusing thing when learing to use it for me was that since I need to highlight to ctrl+c, I will overwrite what is in the middle click clipboard, and it also means you cannot highlight something to replace it with whats in your middle click clipboard. It does however mean that most times you want to do a ctrl+c/ctrl+v both clipboards are in sync. Not sure why, but I often find myself having to copy/paste two things at once, and I use both buffers without thinking. Which makes it impossible to use macos.
They are making it an option
Can 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
Whats next, removing Ctrl+Insert/Shift+Delete/Shift+Insert as its confusing that we have two different ways to use the clipboard?
Gnome is all about
limitingstreamlining the experience!
I think the open in new tab behavior/ do the scroll thing makes more sense for the middle click.
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.
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.
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.
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).
This is why I buy 3-button mice. A wheel is too fiddly to be a suitable replacement.
For example:
For many people this is a non-issue. I think this a case of just accepting we are different and don’t need to force our view on everyone else.
Maybe 15 years ago I had a mouse with a tilting scroll wheel (for side scrolling), on that one I did have issues with middle click, for about a month until I got used to clicking straight down.
So maybe it is just a question of practice? Maybe not. But since both options exist there is no need to get upset.
Did you mean to reply to someone else?
Because your comment makes no sense as a response to what I wrote.
No, it was your assertion that a wheel being too fiddly. It seemed quite broad (stating it as an universal truth). It might be for you, but not for most people (but you wrote it as an unqualified statement).
Yet one more reason why Gnome fucking sucks, however I don’t understand why Mozilla is so determined to sink their own boat lately.
“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.
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.
this feels like a breaking change akin to macOS changing the Command key to bringing up a start menu because it confuses Windows users. platforms have differences, and this one is actually so tiny and inconsequential it feels like any ameliorated confusion will be offset by confusion of people that rely on it and use it. is this really the barrier to adoption?
Keep this and give me three finer drag
