How do I disable middle mouse button click paste?

I use gnome-tweak-tool for disabling middle button paste in Ubuntu 16.04.

1. Install it

   sudo apt install gnome-tweak-tool
   

2. Run it by searching "tweak tool" in installed apps or just type gnome-tweak-tool in a terminal.

3. Go to "Keyboard and mouse" -> "Middle-click paste"

4. Turn off.

   

That's it.

Or using just CLI

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-enable-primary-paste false

Tested on 16.04.

I realise that this is not exactly the answer you want, but you can turn this off in Firefox (e.g. if you don't mind the feature elsewhere, but still want middle click in Firefox to open links in new tabs)

In about:config, set

middlemouse.contentLoadURL false
middlemouse.paste false

Not what you asked, but as this question is linked to from a few places I hope someone finds this answer useful.

Jared Robinson gave a simple solution that works on my machine:

Run the following command:

xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 25 3 4 5 6 7 8 9"

To persist this behavior, edit ~/.Xmodmap and add

pointer = 1 25 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

This currently isn't possible - though, as you have mentioned, there are ways to disable the MOUSE 3 button - or remap it- none of those get at the source of the issue. The X11 Primary Selection.

While this isn't a solution, hopefully this explanation will make it clear WHY. In Ubuntu there are two clipboards at work. One, which everyone is familiar with, the freedesktop.org clipboard (captures Ctrl+C command) The second is a clipboard manager that has been at play since before Ubuntu even existed - X11. The X Server (X11) manages three other clipboards: Primary Selection, Secondary Selection, and Clipboard. When you select text with your pointer it gets copied to a buffer in the XServer, the Primary Selection, and awaits pasting by means of the Mouse 3 button. The other two were designed to be used by other applications in a means to share a common clipboard between applications. In this case the freedesktop.org clipboard manager in Ubuntu already does this for us.

Through the extent of my research I can not find a way to disable the X11 selection manager. There are no compilation flags, applications, or configuration values that can disable this. There are various ways around this on a per application basis (majority of these applications being command line ones) - but nothing on a global scale.

I realize this isn't an ideal solution - but seems to be the truth to the issue. The only relevant solution I could muster is actually a hack, create a script that executes an infinite while loop that just replaces the Primary Selection with a null value.

First install xsel (Tool for manipulation of the X selection) sudo apt-get install xsel

The code is as follows:

while(true)
do
    echo -n | xsel -n -i
    sleep 0.5
done

If you place this in a script and add it to your startup scripts this shouldn't be an issue.

Somehow, I ended up without any xmodmap files on my Ubuntu install, so I had to find a different approach to this problem.

Take a look at the xinput command.

xinput list | grep -i mouse

which lists information about your mouse. It shows my mouse is "Dell Premium USB Optical Mouse" and also that I have "Macintosh mouse button emulation". Armed with that info, I can

xinput get-button-map "Dell Premium USB Optical Mouse"

which gives me a listing that looks like

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Here is the useful, required knowledge. My mouse has, theoretically, 18 buttons. Each button's default action has the same name as it's button number. In other words, button 1 does action 1, button 4 does action 4, etc. Action 0 means "off".

The position in the listing shows the function assigned to that button. So if my button map read

1 3 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 

this would mean button 1 (position 1) does action 1 (normal left button), button 2 (position 2) does action 3 (middle button) and button 3 (position 3) does action 2 (right button).

To make a left handed mouse all you would need would be a button map that starts

3 2 1 4 5 .....

Or, in your case, it looks like you want the middle button to do the same thing as button 1 (left button) so your map needs to start

1 1 3 ....

I'd reset my mouse button mappings thus:

xinput set-button-map "Dell Premium USB Optical Mouse" 1 1 3 5 6 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

In your case, you may have a different number of mapped buttons and have some special button map already defined. Likwely, your mouse has a different name, too. First, get your mouse's "name". Then, use the get-button-map operation to find your base button map. finally, use the set-button-map option, modifying button 2 to do action 1.

This is not a permanent change. I added the necessary code to my .bashrc so it executes every time I login or open a terminal.

Hope this helps.

For a solution to the problem, please view this guide I wrote:

A while ago, I wrote a patch to disable the 'middle mouse button paste' functionality in GTK. I thought that there would be others who want to disable it as well, and hence I thought I should write a small guide to explain how this feat can be accomplished.

Now, some may ask, why would anyone want to disable it? There are a few reasons:

• The middle mouse button doesn't actually paste the so-called XA_CLIPBOARD clipboard, but the XA_PRIMARY clipboard. This is probably counterintuitive to many (users coming from Windows, perhaps), and therefore some may view it as more user-friendly to disable the "inconsistent" or unexpected behavior.
• Some may accidentally paste text using the middle mouse button, and want to avoid that.

A bit of background regarding the XA_CLIPBOARD and XA_PRIMARY clipboard: The XA_PRIMARY clipboard is used mostly for storing selections. Whenever you select some text in for example the GNOME Text Editor (gedit), this text is copied to the XA_PRIMARY clipboard. This text is not pasted when you use the 'Edit -> Paste' menu item, only when you click the middle mouse button. The XA_CLIPBOARD clipboard is mostly used when one uses the general 'Copy/Paste' functionality (through keyboard shortcuts, such as CTRL+C and CTRL+V, or through the menu items 'Edit -> Copy' and 'Edit -> Paste').

Perhaps a patch of this sort (or more drastic changes to the X clipboard and/or how libraries/applications use it) could some day become standard in Linux. I realize opinions on this differ greatly. However, for people who seek to minimize the chances of accidentally pasting some random text, the patch can be pretty useful. For example, with the patch, you can't accidentally paste (at least, with the middle mouse button) text into a document you are editing, or into a web page, or into an instant message, etc.

The guide is for Debian or Debian-based Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and Mint.

What follows are terminal commands with a brief description of what they do (the lines starting with # are comments, which contain these descriptions). You should start a terminal and enter the commands one by one, after carefully reading the descriptions.

# This is a small guide that explains how to patch GTK so that the middle mouse
# button doesn't paste text anymore.

# NOTE:
# The below instructions are for GTK2. However, they should be easy to adapt
# for GTK3 (at the time of writing, the patch works fine for GTK3 too).

# First, update the system by first synchronizing the package index files, and
# then upgrading the packages.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

# Get the build dependencies and essential packages needed in order to compile
# code and create packages.
sudo apt-get build-dep libgtk2.0-0
sudo apt-get install build-essential

# Create a temporary directory, in which we will store the GTK sources and
# later on the packages.
mkdir /tmp/gtk
cd /tmp/gtk

# Download the actual patch that will disable the 'middle mouse button paste'
# functionality (it should be stored in the directory '/tmp/gtk', and will be,
# if you indeed executed the command 'cd /tmp/gtk').
wget http://subversion.assembla.com/svn/slipstream/patches/gtk_disable_middle_mouse_button_paste.patch

# Retrieve the GTK sources.
apt-get source libgtk2.0-0

# You should adapt this line so that it changes to the correct directory (the
# name of the directory that I used here will probably not match the name of
# the directory that was created during 'apt-get source libgtk2.0-0', as it
# contains a version number that often changes). You can find out what the
# correct directory is by entering 'ls -d */' (without the quotes) and looking
# at the names of the directories that it shows.
cd gtk+2.0-2.20.1

# Apply the patch that we downloaded earlier.
patch -p1 < /tmp/gtk/gtk_disable_middle_mouse_button_paste.patch

# The output of the previous command should be:
#     patching file gtk/gtkselection.c
# If it wasn't, then something went wrong. Maybe you mistyped something, maybe
# the current directory isn't the correct directory, maybe the GTK sources
# were changed and the patch doesn't work anymore, etc.

# Build the package (you may have to be patient, this may or may not take a
# while).
dpkg-buildpackage -uc -us --source-option=--auto-commit

# You should adapt this line so that it installs the correct package. The
# package that we want to install is the package containing the GTK library,
# thus _not_ the 'bin', 'udeb', 'common', 'dev', or 'doc' package. To find out
# what the exact package is that you should install, try to find the package (a
# file with a name ending in '.deb') which is closest to the example filename I
# used here (the packages are stored in '/tmp/gtk', and you can list the
# packages using the command 'ls /tmp/gtk/*.deb' (without the quotes)).
sudo dpkg -i ../libgtk2.0-0_2.20.1-2_i386.deb

# And lastly, to make sure that only the patched library is in use, you should
# either log out and back in, or restart your computer.
# And then, the 'middle mouse button paste' functionality should be disabled.
# To test whether it is, try selecting some text in the GNOME Text Editor, or
# in a GNOME Terminal, and then press the middle mouse button while the cursor
# hovers over some place where you can normally type text. If indeed no text
# appears, then it appears that the patch worked.
# If however, the patch did not work, try to re-read this document, to see if
# you made any mistake. And if you did, you may want to either start all over
# again (should be fail-safe), or continue with the guide from the point where
# you made a mistake.

Or, more directly, here's the patch to disable the 'middle mouse button paste' functionality in GTK:

diff -ur gtk+2.0-2.20.1/gtk/gtkselection.c gtk+2.0-2.20.1-patched/gtk/gtkselection.c
--- gtk+2.0-2.20.1/gtk/gtkselection.c   2010-05-01 22:14:29.000000000 -0500
+++ gtk+2.0-2.20.1-patched/gtk/gtkselection.c   2011-09-17 10:45:37.000000000 -0500
@@ -1065,6 +1065,24 @@
   display = gtk_widget_get_display (widget);
   owner_window = gdk_selection_owner_get_for_display (display, selection);

+  if (selection == gdk_atom_intern("PRIMARY", TRUE)) {
+      GtkSelectionData selection_data;
+
+      selection_data.selection = selection;
+      selection_data.target = target;
+      selection_data.type = gdk_atom_intern("STRING", TRUE);
+      selection_data.format = 8;
+      selection_data.data = (unsigned char *)"";
+      selection_data.length = 0;
+      selection_data.display = display;
+
+      gtk_selection_retrieval_report(info, selection_data.type,
+              selection_data.format, selection_data.data,
+              selection_data.length, time_);
+
+      return TRUE;
+  }
+ 
   if (owner_window != NULL)
     {
       GtkWidget *owner_widget;

The only answer that worked for me was given on https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/277488/288916 Radivarig (All credits go to him). Note that I had to make one change though to make it work:

Install xbindkeys:

sudo apt-get install xbindkeys xsel xdotool

Create a configuration file for xbindkeys ~/.xbindkeysrc with the text:

"echo -n | xsel -n -i; pkill xbindkeys; xdotool click 2; xbindkeys"
b:2

Load the configuration file using

xbindkeys -p

Add this line to ~./bashrc so that xbindkeys always loads on startup.

This is what works for me but what Radivarig suggests is to instead use the line

"echo -n | xsel -n -i; pkill xbindkeys; xdotool click 2; xbindkeys"
    b:2 + Release

This last one does not work for me but if one of the versions does not work I suggest to try the other.

After a long time looking this is the only solution I found to work for me that turns off the middle mouse paste button universally without having to disable the middle mouse button completely.

Note that for the existing up-voted answers either they don't answer the question, instead telling you how to disable the middle mouse button completely, or they give a solution that only works in a few programs (tweak-solution only in gedit and gnome terminal and few others) or they simply say it is impossible.

spawn's answer is of a similar spirit and might also work, I did not see it before I found this solution.

Edit: In my opinion the following answer is a better solution than mine: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/501445/72554

Here's the simplest solution I've found to keep middle click functional without it pasting things.

First install sxhkd and xsel.

Then configure ~/.config/.sxhkd/sxhkdrc like so

~button2
    echo -n | xsel -n -i
~control + c
    echo -n | xsel -n -i
~control + x
    echo -n | xsel -n -i

And that's basically it.

Now start sxhkd (or configure it to launch on startup). Now, middle mouse will no longer paste anything but will otherwise function like normal. (As long as you use only ctrl+c and ctrl+x to copy things that is, if you copy things with the mouse it can paste once before it returns to normal.)

For Gnome applications you can use gnome-tweaks (new name of gnome-tweak-tool package) under the "Keyboard & Mouse" tab there's the "Middle Click Paste" option or editing directly the org.gnome.desktop.interface/gtk-enable-primary-paste Gnome option.

For KDE applications seems that there's an equivalent solution.

For the whole X (including non Gnome applications) you can install XMousePasteBlock which then has to be running (by the user is enough, no root required) in order to work. This disables completely the middle click paste without disabling the other middle click functions.

I suggest using one of these, which work mostly well for me:

using xbindkeys: whenever middle-button is pressed, clear the primary clipboard. At least on my system it is cleared, before the pasting happens. Details: create xbindkeys-config:

xbindkeys --defaults > $HOME/.xbindkeysrc

Paste the following new hotkey:

"xclip -i /dev/null"    
    b:2``

Reload xbindkeys (e.g. killall xbindkeys;xbindkeys). Done.

using xdotool: Clear the clipboard on window focus change (should work with most windowmanagers). Details: Execute the following command:

xdotool search --onlyvisible . behave %@ focus exec xclip -i /dev/null

Note that with this command you can still use the primary clipboard within the same window, or pressing middlemouse onto another window BEFORE focusing it (if you don't have "focus follows mouse", or somthing, activated).