In a recent development, changes have been proposed for GNOME and Firefox that would disable a useful feature of graphical environments in Linux – the ability to quickly paste clipboard contents by pressing the middle mouse button. These changes are currently under review and have not been officially approved yet.
The Firefox developers cite the unfamiliarity of this feature for beginners as a reason for the potential disabling. They claim that accidental clicks on the mouse wheel can lead to confusion among users. This argument is also supported by a wiki page on freedesktop.org, which states that the normal Linux clipboard behavior is consistent with Windows and macOS. Middle-click pasting is considered an “Easter egg” for power users. If the change is implemented, Firefox users will need to manually adjust the value of the “middlemouse.paste” parameter in the about:config page.
On the GNOME side, the decision to disable middle-click paste is driven by the desire to eliminate X11-specific features, as this functionality is also supported in Wayland. The current setup can result in unexpected behavior for users of other platforms and is often triggered accidentally. It is suggested that users who rely on middle button paste can reinstate its support by adjusting settings using the command “gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-enable-primary-paste true”.