Ubuntu 11.10 – Middle Mouse Button Emulation | grepmonster

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Ubuntu 11.10 – Middle Mouse Button Emulation

May 31, 2011 by ed1337

Hardcore Linux users will tell you that copy and paste is as simple as selecting a piece of text and middle clicking. And if you’re stuck with a two-button mouse or trackball, the usual trick is to click both left and right buttons simultaneously. This used to work out of the box on Ubuntu, but recent versions (since at least 11.04) do not have the middle button emulation.

What to do? – Install this cool little program:

sudo aptitude install gpointing-device-settings

Then run it and check the middle button emulation box. 🙂

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Posted in Linux, Ubuntu | Tagged Linux, middle mouse emulation, mouse settings, Ubuntu | 32 Comments

32 Responses

on June 4, 2011 at 5:08 pm cstamas

Thank you very much! I never thought I would miss this feature so much -until it stopped working. 🙂
on June 14, 2011 at 12:27 pm Bucky Ball

Using 10.10 and works fine. What I really want to know is how to change the function of the middle mouse button from copy/paste to bringing up the applications menu instead (for instance).
on August 21, 2011 at 6:59 am Take

Thank you! This fixed an annoying issue on my old-ish laptop with only two mouse buttons. I’m running Mint Katya, but the same fix applied for this one as well (not that suprising tho, since this is basically an ubuntu with custom theme).
on August 28, 2011 at 2:43 pm Peter Lofgren

Thank you! I’ve missed being able to middle click, but now I can again.
on September 24, 2011 at 6:11 pm tom

THANK YOU
on October 10, 2011 at 10:15 am Nicolas

Thanks a lot! Was, I’ve been fighting with xorg.conf over the week end with no success. Nice one!
on October 11, 2011 at 7:12 pm Patrick

THANK YOU !!!
I have more and more impression that Ubuntu is taking rid of anything very useful for programmers and doing anything possible for basic people ….
on October 14, 2011 at 10:10 pm Jakob

Thanks again… next release of Ubuntu will probally just be a wrapper for MSWIN….

seriously, has ubuntu and gnome/unity totally lost it?
on October 14, 2011 at 10:50 pm Brandon Craig Rhodes (@brandon_rhodes)

Thank you! The middle-button emulation setting is missing from the current version of gnome-control-center and I did not remember where to look next when my freshly updated 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot laptop refused to recognize middle-clicks.
on October 18, 2011 at 7:23 pm Bjarni

Thank you!!
on October 21, 2011 at 3:51 pm siyman

I’m using a eeePC 901 with built in trackpad and get stuck here – there is no middle mouse button emulation tooltip or anything in device settings. I found out that pressing both mouse buttons works like a charm, but in previous versions I was able to tap with three fingers simultanousely for having that scroll button emulation. Any idea how to bring that back?
Thanks in advance – siyman
on October 21, 2011 at 4:20 pm daz

it works but after rebooting you have to do it again
on October 23, 2011 at 5:36 pm Dan

You can fix this more permanently across reboots by adding the following to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Section “InputClass”
Identifier “middle button emulation”
MatchIsPointer “on”
Option “Emulate3Buttons” “on”
EndSection
on October 28, 2011 at 5:35 pm Joaquin

Thanks!
on November 9, 2011 at 12:38 pm Dan

On 11.10 you can simply run this to set it permanently for the current user:

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.mouse middle-button-enabled true
on November 12, 2011 at 7:00 am Vipin

Thanks for this nice little share. I am a developer and middle click for select/paste is a critical requirement for me. Thanks once again!!
on November 14, 2011 at 6:49 am Venkatesh

Thank you!
on December 3, 2011 at 6:41 am Taylor Stephens Wall

I though this would work on Ubuntu Mint 12, but it appears that there is no solution. Dang.
on December 3, 2011 at 9:25 pm Greg

Thank you for posting this. It worked for me on Ubuntu 11.10.
on December 22, 2011 at 1:52 am Richard

I ran gpointing-device-settings once and it worked right away, and with subsequent boots with Ubuntu 11.04. Great little program.
on January 16, 2012 at 3:28 pm 11.10 İçin Bilinen Hatalar/Sorunlar/Çözümler « Ubuntu Türkiye

[…] https://grepmonster.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/ubuntu-11-10-middle-mouse-button-emulation/ […]
on January 17, 2012 at 11:24 am raf

Grazie = Thank you 🙂
on February 14, 2012 at 3:42 pm Ian Davis

Unfortunately, it installs but when I run it gives me a segfault.. Strace doesn’t really help, so I’ll try compiling from the source.. Thanks for the direction!
on February 29, 2012 at 5:38 pm Alison R.

This was just what I needed on Linux Mint 12, after modifying the xorg.conf settings still didn’t get middle click working. Thanks for the tip!
on June 4, 2012 at 2:44 pm slinkp

On mint 13 (cinnamon), I had good results with “gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.mouse middle-button-enabled true” as suggested by Dan.
on June 30, 2012 at 6:12 pm Jason

OMG! I’m now a happy 12.04 terminal user 😀 Thank you!
on November 26, 2012 at 5:59 pm Hank Barta

Any idea how to get the middle mouse button enabled if you have one? I have run the above procedure and can insert by chording MB1 and MB3 but the system seems to ignore the middle button (clicking scroll wheel on a Logitech MX Laser.) OTOH, the click on a newer Logitech M510 does work to insert text.

This is following an upgrade from Ubuntu 10.04 to Mint 13 (Cinnamon.)

thanks
on December 12, 2012 at 5:55 pm Peter

For those of you who didn’t have success with gpointing-device-settings (I did not) check out xinput, it helped me to restore middle button emulation on my Logitech Marble mouse trackball under precise 12.04 I guess it can also help those with 3-button mice as well
on March 27, 2013 at 2:47 pm Will

THANK YOU!!! awesome to be able to apt-get this, install, run, and MAGIC! Thanks
on April 4, 2013 at 6:33 am Roger Evans

Thanks for this suggestion. It worked for me on mint 11 and if I hadn’t seen it, I would have installed another distribution to get this feature back. However, on mint 14, I also got the segfault when using gpointing-device-settings. Fortunately, all I had to do to get middle mouse paste to work with mint 14 cinnamon was settings->general->”Emulate middle click….”. Now THAT’s magic.
on July 11, 2013 at 9:48 pm anthony glaser

thanks brother, appreciate it. This used to be the default, what are these people thinking taking that out?
on October 4, 2013 at 5:33 pm Middle click on Linux Mint with Logitech Marble Mouse - Linux/BSD Geek

[…] Found a fix at grepmonster.wordpress.com. […]

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