On Tue, Jun 09, 2026 at 11:16:40AM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via Talk wrote:
For four decades, I've been copying text by selecting it and then pasting by clicking the middle mouse button.
It suddenly stopped working, with no announcement that I saw, when I updated from Fedora 43 to Fedora 44. It was very frustrating. That this was intentional is quite rude.
There are actually two paste buffers: the ^C / ^V one and the mouse select / middle button click one.
It turns out that this is a GNOME "improvement". Here's an OK write-up. <https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/can-we-revert-downstream-the-disabling-of-middle-click-pasting-future-version-of-gnome/179408> See also <https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=313089>
Fix 1: dconf write /org/gnome/desktop/interface/gtk-enable-primary-paste true That only affects the current user. Variants of that command can have system-wide effects (I try not to understand dconf).
Fix 2:
Use GNOME Tweaks: Mouses & Touchpad: Mouse: Middle Click Paste This only affects the current user/
Fix 3: Don't use gnome. -- Len Sorensen