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.
this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2026
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Reminds me of LWN and the end of the Rust experiment.
I can't tell you how many times I've accidentally pasted random private stuff from that goddamn middle click into WEB PAGES! Things that can read whatever text you type without having to explicitly submit anything. It's a horrible thing for a new user to discover by accident. It's such an unexpected feature to new users, and no one gets told about it, ever. You simply discover it by accident.
This is a good change, not having it on by default.
To all the haters of this idea, god forbid we make Linux less weird by default for people migrating from Windows.
All that said, I have learned to love select-to-copy and middle-click paste. Especially in the terminal.
Until this article I didn't even know you could middle-click paste.
I've done it countless times by mistake in Discord when trying to scroll through a channel..
This. Only correct comment in the entire thread. Rest are people who probably don't even use computers and have no idea what a mouse is.
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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
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.
Don't you touch my middle paste!
It would be fucking GNOME
Please don't fuck a gnome, that's very impolite
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.
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
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This is one of the most useful things in Xorg, and prior to that in X11. If you (generic you, not anyone in particular here) don't know about it it's because you come from too long time on "my users are stupid" operating systems. It's one of those things that once you have it in muscle memory you use it without even thinking about it.
Have I mis-pasted things? Yes. Have l pasted my password in an IRC channel? Yes. Would I stop using it because once every few months I make a mistake? Not at all.
Make it configurable, if you must, but leave us old timers work the way we have done for 30 years or more. There are already some software/ toolkits that disable it, so it is likely doable on a per-app basis.
Gratuitous "old man yells at clouds" rant: people should be forced to use a VT52 for one year before being granted GUI privileges, especially if you work with network hardware.
I'll crawl back in my cave now.
It seems to me that having a mouse button defaultly paste the contents of the keyboard without the inclusion of a modifier key is just a bad idea.
As you said, you have pasted the wrong thing by accident because it's one button press.
It just seems to me that by default pasting text should not be done by a single button press anywhere where your hand rests, like a mouse or the center of a keyboard. I'm not saying people shouldn't be able to make it's a configurable option, options are good, but it is not a good default.
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I like my middle paste, so long as it isn't gone for good I'm happy. Having 2 clipboards is also nice
Why is this a thing? I've never wanted a feature less..
Because it is awesome. So useful, and fast.
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Damn I'm using that I hope they don't remove it!
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.
I’m honestly baffled. These are two companies that are clearly past their best days, largely because of a string of controversial decisions in recent years that have pushed many users toward alternatives that feel more reasonable and do not attempt to re-educate users’ behavior.
On point 👌
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good (also they're proposing a toggle that's off by default)
Toggle is the nicest way to go for any feature that has stayed for a long time and has a dedicated user base.
TIL middle mouse paste.
I discovered this feature on my 1st Linux distro in early 2000s, was like "Huh, that's interesting" then tried Ctrl+V, and then adopted both into my daily workflow. Whenever Bitwarden autofill doesn't work or unavailable by the site security settings, I copy my pass into the clipboard and select my username and paste both in a single action
That's the real linux user story.
We come for the speed, flexibility, FOSS values ... but we STAY for the middle mouse paste.
Fun thing is that I didn’t even know that existed.
Then I tell you something that might either blow your mind or be useful in future (or just being fun fact):
On Linux there is the regular copy/paste clipboard, which you already know how it works. But then there is this primary clipboard called primary selection too, that is independent from normal clipboard. Text will be copied to primary selection when you select a text (in example in Firefox). Just by selection the text with the mouse is enough and it will not affect the normal clipboard. Then you can middle click the text from primary clipboard.
Read more here: https://tronche.com/gui/x/icccm/sec-2.html#s-2.6.1
It's cool, but I cannot count the amount of times I was confused by that and accidentally pasted after switching, I would be glad if it became configurable.
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Well fuck me. That's kinda neat.
Shame it doesn't subsequently work with ctrl+v, because that would be even cooler.
Once you're used to it, you can use the two separate clipboards independently. Say you wrote a sentence like, "one two five four three", you can correct it by selecting "three", cutting with Ctrl-X, then selecting "five" (meaning it is now in the selection buffer), hitting Ctrl-V to paste "three" from the clipboard, and then finally middle-click where you need to paste the "five".
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It'd be so easy for them to just add "by default" to the end of the title.
Kinda curious why would X11 have that many clipboards to begin with. Different people implemented their personal macros perhaps…?
Middle click was standard initially in Unix world, then Microsoft Office came with it's Ctrl-C, and users now expect every text editor to support Ctrl-C to copy (and not abort the active command like all terminals do).
I don't understand how one can accidentally paste with the middle-click, but I can see in this thread that it happens. I was very much against this change but now I need to see stats. Are there any?
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