TIL middle mouse paste.
Finally!
I occasionally use middle mouse paste, but I switched my partner over from Windows recently and they were used to scrolling by holding MMB and dragging which seems to be the default on Windows…
I expected there to be a toggle to turn off middle mouse paste but there just wasn’t. I had to go into multiple different places to disable it and enable autoscroll for all their apps. I ended up installing a hacky tool that would just clear the clipboard whenever MMB was pressed.
If anything can make this process easier, I’m all for it.
Yeah, good idea… After all, who needs copy and paste at all? Better remove it at the root…
/ssssssss
Highlight->Middle paste has been my friend for decades now. Using it from SunOS in the 90-s to now has been a great feature. It’s the quickest way to copy and paste while I’m working fast with text or data entry.
I love having both clipboards be functional. The latest rounds of tools that have stopped being as compatible with it has been no end of problems in my workflow. I’ll copy with the keyboard, highlight some text and then paste both clipboards somewhere else.
No, using the keyboard here isn’t as fast, don’t bother making that argument, especially since ctrl-c means different things in different places on Unix style systems. Left hand stays home row while the right is forced to leave for the mouse since it’s a GUI.
I’ve had to deal with many tools that don’t respect keyboard cut/paste as well. Add in that some tools like putty or git bash on windows have ctrl-ins for paste?
Panning in CAD/design is usually click and hold middle or even a two button system (freecad), so trying to take a middle click for that isn’t buying uniformity.
The copy/paste world is already fractured enough. Keep the highlight/middle click working so we can go fast. I might be a dinosaur, but I’m a fast dinosaur.
reading these comments had me wondering if i was the only dinosaur around. lol
The essence of the article:
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 functionality will be there and can be enabled. The reasoning:
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.
Mozilla are still using Phabricator?! That stopped being maintained in 2021…
But why? Then the users thinks “huh, weird” and goes on.
I’ve seen that countless times with people that are less technical.
I don’t understand what the problem here is. But why the option exists? If someone does not care, then why would someone have any say in such an option? You can’t enforce people to care.
It’s very easy for a user to accidentally paste private or sensitive information somewhere dangerous if theyre unaware of this feature.
The FreeDesktop specification refers to this feature as an “easter egg”, and something like this should absolutely not be an easter egg.
This change would mean disabling it by default and adding a settings entry that actually explains it, making sure users are informed before they can accidentally use it.
Then that could be solved by displaying a message the first time GNOME is launched, not by disabling it. This will just break workflows for quite a lot of people.
It will break their workflow for a few seconds before they change the setting back. Or they could read the changes before installing a major update and change it before even doing anything.
Maybe in the future it will be added to the initial setup guide along with stuff like choosing if you want mouse acceleration, but I really dont think its that big a deal.
“read the changes before installing a major update”
As if people have the time to read the changelogs for every single package all the time… 🙄
This is pretty important on a server to avoid disruptions and outages, but people have other things to do.
And once it is no longer on and has become a setting, they can just remove the setting and force people to drop gsettings and then remove it completely.
They could also instead ask people on first launch. Some people enable telemetry, so they will find out how many people prefer to keep it, which I bet will be most.
To have it as ab option, great. I believe KDE already has this? Computers should work the way the user wants it, so a middle click should do what the user wants it to do.
Removing it completely would be insanity
Why is this a thing? I’ve never wanted a feature less…
Because it is awesome. So useful, and fast.
Middle paste, like many features, can be used to increase productivity. It’s normal. A better question would be why doesn’t Windows have it? It makes no sense to dumb down Linux to the level of Windows, just when people are leaving Windows because the user experience is so bad. Sure, make it an option in Settings. So people can continue to use it if they want. But there are many things worth utilising to save clicks on both Windows and Linux. Get to know them, if you want to get on with things.
I use middle click paste all the time, but the title is misleading and clickbaity. At least on GNOME’s side they’re discussing about disabling it by default, not completely. While this is annoying as long as the setting isn’t going away I’m fine with that and I understand the reasoning behind it.
Reminds me of LWN and the end of the Rust experiment.
Would they kindly discuss using Super+C and Super+V for copy paste instead ? It’s the only thing I miss from macOS.
You can add shortcuts yourself in gnome, no ?
Yes but that doesn’t always translate to every program. But also, I use Plasma anyway x)
GNOME really seems to be targeting some mythical user who is tech savvy enough to install Linux, is likely running Windows currently, wants their new operating system to feel like MacOS but is also helplessly confused by any settings/customizability or the smallest change in behavior from other operating systems.
I don’t generally see recommendations for new users/less tech savvy to use GNOME anymore since there are plenty of DEs that behave closer to what they’re already used to and it feels like most of the enthusiasts have largely abandoned it already. I just don’t understand who they think this is for. Just baffling decision after baffling decision
https://piefed.social/comment/9549428 They don’t want to disable it, just not make it on by default.
As a new migrating user looking to escape Bill Gates bullshit middle click paste was really confusing as I wanted middle click to remain consistent with screen panning, like panning a camera in blender or panning a canvas in gimp. Had to run through a few guides to disable middle click paste. I was surprised there wasn’t an option to enable/disable globally. Having an option will help other noobs like myself ditch Mac/windows for Linux and maintaining a familiar workflow.
I have long found it more useful what the middle mouse button does on Windows (start scrolling) and hope that becomes widely adopted, even outside browsers, on Linux one day too. Good step in that direction.
What? No way. I despise their captive scrolling stuff. Every time I get forced onto a windows system I forget that middle mouse is a weird scrolling mode and end up wandering randomly up and down pages until I realize what happened.
I might switch away from GNOME if this passes. I’ve lost enough QoL features/UI degradations already with no option to go back.
They only discuss to disable it by default, not removing the functionality.
That’s at least an improvement, I didn’t think GNOME had it in them to add more user-defined options.
It’d be so easy for them to just add “by default” to the end of the title.
Damn I’m using that I hope they don’t remove it!
