select-middle-click-paste (x-windows feature) emulation possible?

Discussion & Questions
1

Hi crew,

Linux has an amazing and intuitive productivity feature: select some text, middle click somewhere else and the text gets pasted. No keyboard shortcuts needed, and your clipboard is NOT touched.

two examples:
So if you must copy over two things, you select one, hit ctrl-C, then select another, go to the other app. middle-click in a text field to select the 2nd thing, ctrl-v will paste the 1st.

If you must copy over a lot of small things, put both windows side-by-side and go select-middle-click - rinse-repeat. It's faster and easier than with shortcuts and your copy history doesn't get completely flooded.

Various sites on the world wide web say Mac can't do it, but the answers are usually quite some years old and a friend of mine insists BTT fixes EVERY problem you can have, except world hunger. And he's not sure about the world hunger.

So I'm kind'a hoping for a definitive answer, I'm always clicking and trying to paste and then going back to the first window again, clicking again, command-C... you know :smiley: I miss my faster copy-pasta :spaghetti:

PS: the closest promise I found is this: https://github.com/lodestone/macpaste
that's right, WHENEVER you release the mouse button it does a command-C and does a command-V on middle-click. It's hacky beyond belief of course, and makes your clipboard history useless if you're a frequent click-reader like I am :crying_cat_face:

2

Two windows side-by-side: Why don't you use drag and drop? "No keyboard shortcuts are needed, and the clipboard is NOT touched.", as you wanted.

3

Hmmm, drag'n'drop text, bit of a pita with a touch pad, but then I guess it would work in most cases. Tnx Frank. It's at least a solution in that case, not really if you're moving across desktops of course.

4

Tell me, is it more important for you not to use the keyboard or not to use the clipboard?

5

Well, the benefit is in speed - it's just super quick to tripple-click a word or select a few words, then middle-click somewhere else to paste.

If it would 'pollute' the clipboard history, which I often search in to copy a url or piece of text I used yesterday, it would make my use of the clipboard a lot less pleasant.

And of course - I often use it when editing some html - copying a tag to the beginning and end of a few lines goes super quick if you select the closing tag - command-C - then simply select the opening tag - then go at the end of a sentence, command-V to paste closing tag, middle click at the beginning to paste opening tag, next next next.

With "just" copy-paste, this would take about twice as long, I first have to paste one tag, then go to each line again for the other.

But it's a bit of a corner case I guess.

For other cases, drag'n'drop is not much worse - - IF it works. Sadly, for example from a PDF to a text document, it is not possible - I can select and copy, not drag'n'drop. It does work from the browser to a text document, even though on a touch pad it is limited - often, if you try to drag it starts to select more.

6

I return to the beginning.

„select some text, middle click somewhere else and the text gets pasted.“

If you want to simulate this with your mouse or trackpad, you can. With BTT you just need more steps. But I think it is still fast.

  1. „select some text“

  2. eg. 1 Finger Force Click = Command + c

  3. „click somewhere else“, then eg: 2 Finger Tap = Command + v

Of course you can also use any other gesture or mouse button for it. I hope this helps :slight_smile: