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How to disable Middle-Mouse-wheel Click to Paste (XFCE)
Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2020 7:22 pm
by remoteone
This is apparently a problem that has been around in linux for decades.
The problem is that most mice these days have sensitive mouse wheel button action.
Thats great for most things , except click-to-paste. I know Im not alone with this issue as there are thousands of requests over the web for a simple way to disable this.
Im not changing my expensive G304 mouse to one with a heavier action after finally finding one that has high enough DPI to work productively on a 4K display.
The problem is with accidental pastes when writing article, emails etc. Imagine your username or password mistakenly being pasted into an email:
This issue
- Big SECURITY RISK
- Poor Productivity, having to manually check and re-check articles before sending/publishing.
- Random pastes completely stuffing php/html coding.
I could not find a setting in the Settings Editor or other Mouse/Touchpad settings managers.
My last resort may be to dismantle the mouse to try and make the click tension heavier.
Is there a way to disable JUST the Click to Paste "feature" of the Middle-Mouse-wheel in MXL xfce?
Re: How to disable Middle-Mouse-wheel Click to Paste (XFCE)
Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2020 7:43 pm
by JayM
A web search comes up with many, many sites with solutions for disabling only the click-to-paste mouse wheel function in Linux. Try it.
Re: How to disable Middle-Mouse-wheel Click to Paste (XFCE)
Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2020 8:11 pm
by remoteone
Thank you for your suggestion Jay,
After I tried one, that did nothing, decided to reach out to a more direct approach...the forum.
Most "solutions" describe known bugs associated with clipboard managers, or are for Gnome or other platforms. I was hoping for a specific solution for Debian/Xfce to prevent wasting my life testing this-and-that possible application for days on end!
This is a productivity issue... and Ive got work to do!solution
Crazy that in the end I may need to mechanically modify the mouse to solve an obvious security risk.
Re: How to disable Middle-Mouse-wheel Click to Paste (XFCE)
Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2020 8:18 pm
by remoteone
Well, of some help is the config setting in Mozilla FF and Thunderbird for middlemouse.paste
Still need this OS wide for coding etc. but its a start.
Re: How to disable Middle-Mouse-wheel Click to Paste (XFCE)
Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2020 9:09 pm
by JayM
https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-disable- ... ossa-linux
Install the gnome-tweaks package, open a terminal and run
and follow the instructions on that website. I found this by searching Duckduckgo for the text of the subject of your post. Since Xfce is GTK-based it should work even though the instructions are for Gnome.
Re: How to disable Middle-Mouse-wheel Click to Paste (XFCE)
Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2020 11:14 pm
by remoteone
Thanks JayM, that seems to have worked, I'll test further to see if it stuffs anything else.
I did find that page with a Startpage search, but am so used to getting failures/bugs of non-GTK-based apps that didnt want to risk it.
Mind you the list of errors that pop up in terminal are a worry:
Code: Select all
WARNING : Shell not installed or running
WARNING : Error loading desktopfile: ~/.config/autostart/gnome-keyring-secrets.desktop
WARNING : Error loading desktopfile: ~/.config/autostart/copyq.desktop
WARNING : Error loading desktopfile: ~/.config/autostart/blueman.desktop
WARNING : Error loading desktopfile: ~/.config/autostart/xfce4-volumed.desktop
WARNING : Shell not running
NoneType: None
WARNING : Error detecting shell
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/gtweak/tweaks/tweak_group_shell_extensions.py", line 217, in __init__
raise Exception("Shell not running or DBus service not available")
Exception: Shell not running or DBus service not available
(gnome-tweaks:7999): Gtk-WARNING **: 14:30:31.380: gtk_window_present_with_time() should not be called with 0, or GDK_CURRENT_TIME as a timestamp, the timestamp should instead be gathered at the time the user initiated the request for the window to be shown
(gnome-tweaks:7999): GLib-GIO-CRITICAL **: 14:30:31.391: g_dbus_proxy_new: assertion 'G_IS_DBUS_CONNECTION (connection)' failed
(repeated ~11 times )
Re: How to disable Middle-Mouse-wheel Click to Paste (XFCE)
Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2020 12:53 am
by metreo
Disabling middle-click is something I would expect find as a white check-box in the Terminal Settings manager.
Re: How to disable Middle-Mouse-wheel Click to Paste (XFCE)
Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2020 1:33 am
by JayM
metreo wrote: ↑Fri Nov 13, 2020 12:53 am
Disabling middle-click is something I would expect find as a white check-box in the Terminal Settings manager.
MX/Xfce doesn't have a terminal settings manager. There's Preferences within the Xfce4 Terminal if that's what you mean but I don't know why you'd expect to find global mouse configuration settings there.
Re: How to disable Middle-Mouse-wheel Click to Paste (XFCE)
Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2020 5:22 am
by remoteone
Update Re: gnome-tweaks - did not fix the issue for gtk3 apps
Re: How to disable Middle-Mouse-wheel Click to Paste (XFCE)
Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2020 3:28 pm
by fehlix
remoteone wrote: ↑Thu Nov 12, 2020 7:22 pm
Is there a way to disable JUST the Click to Paste "feature" of the Middle-Mouse-wheel in MXL xfce?
Please post the output of this command running from terminal command line:
You will get something like this as shown on my pc:
Code: Select all
xinput --list
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Logitech USB Laser Mouse id=11 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ X10 WTI RF receiver mouse id=12 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ USB Keyboard id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ USB Keyboard System Control id=9 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ USB Keyboard Consumer Control id=10 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ X10 WTI RF receiver id=13 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ ACPI Virtual Keyboard Device id=14 [slave keyboard (3)]
My mouse has id=11
Now I can get the mouse buttons order this way:
Code: Select all
xinput --list 11 | egrep 'Buttons? '
where I got:
Code: Select all
xinput --list 11 | egrep 'Buttons? '
Buttons supported: 16
Button labels: "Button Left" "Button Middle" "Button Right" "Button Wheel Up" "Button Wheel Down" "Button Horiz Wheel Left" "Button Horiz Wheel Right" "Button Side" "Button Extra" "Button Forward" "Button Back" "Button Task" "Button Unknown" "Button Unknown" "Button Unknown" "Button Unknown"
Please post the output of those command mentioned and we can adjust it to construct a command running e.g at login or bound to a keyboard shortcut dis disable / enable middle-click.