Firefox have been pretty random with primary selection just not working in random cases and it has been massively annoying
There are cases where you can select text, ctrl+c works, but just selecting it doesn't copy it to primary clipboard (example I hit often is various CI/CD text fields like in Jenkins)
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/P...
There are cases where you can select text, ctrl+c works, but just selecting it doesn't copy it to primary clipboard (example I hit often is various CI/CD text fields like in Jenkins)
I understand that some folks really like it but can’t quite grasp why. Though I believe them when they say it’s useful for them.
I agree it's less convenient (there's an extra step: explicitly copying the text), but in my experience it's also more reliable as you don't lose it by just selecting anything.
I think I'm in this boat too. I use this feature, I'm accustomed to it, but throughout my day I am constantly forgetting whether something is in my selection buffer or my clipboard. Windows and Mac users just don't have this problem.
Selecting text with no purpose and being worried that it's a security hole is like saying "I leave my car on the street with the keys in it therefore nobody should have keys".
Or is a huge surprise (to the typical user) that highlighting text BY ITSELF in one window exposes that information for JavaScript running in a different application (like the browser). It’s like knowing that my smart TV is fingerprinting my viewing habits.
Isn’t the biggest security risk from copy and pasting passwords from a “secure” location to another one?
It looks like with modern browsers, reading the clipboard is gated behind some restrictions. Whew.
What I don't like is website that only have a button to copy something because it ends up in the wrong clipboard and that's confusing.
fwiw I find the workflow advantages of it questionable, since I often want to select some text and ctrl+v to replace it with the clipboard.
This behavior is not consistent across applications in Linux even.
The only application I've seen it (occasionally) not work is Emacs. I have a line in my config to ensure it always works.
In over 20 years of using Linux, I don't think I've encountered an app where middle click to paste doesn't work.
> WHY the fuck would they disable it?
I personally dislike this feature a lot, and it's very common for me to middle-click paste accidentally, even after years of using Fedora Linux as my one and only operating system across all of my machines. I've previously used a Firefox extension to override this default, but was bothered by the fact that other applications would still just middle-click paste.
Not everyone is a power user. Not everyone has the same workflow as you. Decisions like these have to be taken based on what the target audience for a desktop wishes. Arguably, GNOME is absolutely not for power users (just take a look at how similar it is to the macOS desktop environment to notice that).
Ok: can you show us the poll done by GNOME devs here? Please add the URL.
Middle click scrolls in Window?
I think this whole discussion is based on an assumption that changing the default is part of an agenda to get rid of middle-click-paste entirely. I don't think it is.
Would be good to see a well designed survey on this.
To me, middle click for pasting is not a power feature, but something I thought most Linux/UNIX users knew. It was one of the first things I learned on a UNIX DE.
Second, who cares what the Windows default behavior is? Why is GNOME changing a mainstay of UNIX to be more like Windows? For the last 15 years, I've used Linux and Windows both - very heavily. I've never used middle click for scrolling. Seems like an eye candy feature and not intended to be useful.
I'm on a MacOS right now, and middle clicking to scroll is absent.
the proposal is to change the default beahvior, not getting rid of the ability outright. as long as they both retain the ability to change the behavior back to how was before, it doesn't seem like this is as dire as the author is trying to make it out.
I sympathize with the idea of having to add yet another setting change to what I'm sure is a long list of configs/settings updates that most of us have to perform everytime we boot up a new system but this is all that it looks like would be the case here if this proposal goes through
It took a while to realise it is the combination of:
- having selected something
- hovering over an editable field
- pressing the middle mouse button
But now, a few years down the line, I cannot live without. It is so convenient to, for example, copy the password and then double click the username and paste them both with the flick of the mouse and a ctrl+v. Nearly every time I touch my partner's Windows device for 5 minutes, I run into a situation where it would have been convenient and saved a second trip back and forth between two tabs or windows
Default off is where neat things go to die because the discovery factor is gone, it gets forgotten, falls out of use, and becomes only a burden to maintain
> It really should be the default though
The current setting is a net win imo. What desktop environments could do is explain what just happened when you use it for the first time, so that you don't accidentally paste data somewhere without realising it
First you make it as an option.
Then you remove the option.
This is GNOME development style.
I never tried Wayland, but does middle paste even exist between wayland windows ?
I've been in hundreds of meetings, watching someone highlight something, copy it with the mouse, then go over to Teams and they somehow LOSE what they copied. Hundreds of calls like this.
If you work at Discord or Microsoft stop replacing my keyboard contents if the text input field is EMPTY because I accidentally hit Ctrl C before I got to hit Ctrl V.
I would not want to use Linux without middle mouse button paste feature. Even if it is an xorg-ism.
I believe your experience, but I'm quite amazed: I have been using the selection clipboard all the time for 15 years, and I never had such issues.
My understanding is it's a cross-DE way to highlight text in a terminal and paste it into the browser, useful for a debugging search and/or bug reports.
Is there a more common way of achieving this that works across all terminal apps and browser types in Linux?
Separately, PuTTY has a similar mechanism for copy, though this goes in the normal Windows clipboard.
May I ask how it is a large security hole and how it is larger than the "Ctrl+C" clipboard? Genuinely interested.
Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V copy and paste is not such a big issue because far more people are familiar with it, and it requires more deliberate actions on both sides (copying and pasting). So you're less likely to accidentally copy something around that you didn't mean to.
So it's not really a security hole as much as knowing your passwords and muttering them in your sleep is one.
So nothing like a "large security hole" that needs to be fixed, right?
I mean at this point, "SSH is a large security hole because people may enter their password while someone looks at their keyboard". I wouldn't consider that a reason to remove SSH.
However... "This is an X11ism, originally an xsetting 1 which frequently results is in unexpected behavior when people pressing the middle mouse button."
Does this even work on Wayland? I'm still using X11 for many reasons, including highlight/middle-click-paste.
But in all seriousness, why are we moving away from usability features ingrained into muscle memory after 30 years across all desktop computing platforms?
Have we not learned in the past 10 to 20 years that pandering to the lowest common denominator destroys good software and turns it into an enshittified mess?
We need to stop removing features because people are too stupid to use them.
If they’re too stupid to use the features they’re too stupid to use the product.
I think it makes total sense to change the default to be aligned with the other platforms, and leave power-users the choice to keep it enabled if they wish.
I have been using Linux for 20 years, and I don't remember a time where this did not exist. I don't see a reason to change it now "to be aligned with the other platforms".
If I wanted to run on Windows or macOS, I would run on Windows or macOS. No reason to try to get Linux to become Windows or macOS IMO.
If you want to use another platform, use another platform. Desktop Linux doesn't need to conform to them.
I think it makes total sense to not use cmd-c/cmd-v in Firefox on mac to be aligned with the other platforms, and leave power-users the choice to keep it enabled if they wish.
See what I did ther?
I would also argue that they should leave middle click alone - "some users are confused" doesn't strike me as a good enough reason for removing a 30-years-old Linux feature (someone will always be confused) and I'm willing to bet they don't have enough data to onow how many users are not confused.
Then again, Gnome's "we know better than you" attitude is why I switched to Mate years ago.
[1] https://pointieststick.com/2024/02/09/this-week-in-kde-inchi... search "Active screen follows mouse"
[2] https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=481069
[3] https://blogs.kde.org/2025/11/26/going-all-in-on-a-wayland-f...
In my opinion apps should offer an API for cut/copy/paste and the DE maps it to concrete events like Ctrl-C. This would make it easy for people that switch between Mac and Linux to have copy on Super-C and keep Ctrl-C for cancel in the terminal.
Just as a single data point: I use middle mouse paste maybe 90% of the time. The only inconvenience is that you can't select and copy, then select some other text and replace it with what you copied. Oh, and I've been using Wayland full-time for more than 4 years.
Only if the option was removed entirely would I have reason to complain.
I love selecting some text in the terminal, then just middle-clicking and... aaahhh!
Personally, I find middle-click primary selection paste one of the nicest conveniences in Linux, along with Alt (or Meta) dragging of windows. But if GNOME made it a default-off option that wouldn't be the end of the world. Those of us who love it would quickly seek out the option to enable it. But I get the impression that GNOME tends to value opinionated simplicity, and I wouldn't be surprised if that default-off option just disappeared after a while.
Middle button paste is one of the greatest day-to-day, click-to-click, UI efficiency improvements offered in a *nix environment!.
Of course, the "copy" part is also important: That is, the text only need be marked, no right-click menu COPY, or Ctrl-Anything required.
Mark, and Middle-click, Done!
It sounds like the real security hole is the need for an "I'm an Idiot" mode on most computers...
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