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GNOME and Mozilla Discuss Proposal to Disable Middle Mouse Paste on Linux (linuxiac.com)

submitted 1 week ago by cm0002@ttrpg.network to c/linux@programming.dev

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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.

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[–] Rakqoi@piefed.blahaj.zone 6 points 6 days ago

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/XMousePasteBlock

[–] irelephant@programming.dev 4 points 6 days ago

I think the open in new tab behavior/ do the scroll thing makes more sense for the middle click.

[–] sorrowl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 6 days ago

Finally! Middle click paste annoyed me so much when I first started using Linux, it should not be on by default imo.

[–] ryper@lemmy.ca 85 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 66 points 1 week ago (17 children)

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?)

[–] Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I actually did not know there are two clipboards. Why/how do they work?

[–] The_Decryptor@aussie.zone 24 points 6 days ago

They're called "selections", the main ones being PRIMARY and CLIPBOARD, and it's effectively a form of IPC mediated by X. When you select something, that goes into the PRIMARY selection, while when you copy something, it goes into both PRIMARY and CLIPBOARD.

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.

[–] wltr@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 6 days ago

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.

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[–] spartanatreyu@programming.dev 37 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 2 points 3 days ago

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.

[–] tyler@programming.dev 22 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] priapus@piefed.social 34 points 1 week ago (10 children)

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.

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[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 25 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] kamstrup@programming.dev 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 1 points 3 days ago

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

[–] MercuryGenisus@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago (4 children)

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.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 1 points 3 days ago

It was great before we had scroll wheels. Now it's too easy to middle click while scrolling a document

[–] mumblerfish@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago

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.

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[–] recursive_recursion@piefed.ca 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Mozilla and Gnome
What the fuck guys. Are you for real?

This is what you spend your time on?

[–] morto@piefed.social 20 points 1 week ago (4 children)

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

[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 0 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] morto@piefed.social 3 points 6 days ago

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

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[–] amateurcrastinator@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Can I just say what the fuck?

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