In Windows, I'm used to clicking the center button and it offering a "fast scroll" option up or down. How can I get this behavior on Linux? It currently seems to use the back button upon center click instead.
I use Gnome under CentOS.
In Windows, I'm used to clicking the center button and it offering a "fast scroll" option up or down. How can I get this behavior on Linux? It currently seems to use the back button upon center click instead.
I use Gnome under CentOS.
This Windows feature has never really made its way into the Unix world. In the Unix world, the primary purpose of the middle mouse button is to paste the clipboard content (or more precisely, text selected with the mouse, which is auto-copied). A couple of cross-platform applications such as Firefox and Chrome that support Linux-style middle mouse button under Windows and vice versa, but other than that most applications don't support this kind of fine-grained scrolling.
Nonetheless, you can get fairly close at the system level. It is possible to set up a mouse button such that when it is pressed, mouse movements are transformed into wheel events. This is the same feature that you're used to, but you're likely to find the motion choppy, because applications receive wheel events, which are typically interpreted as scrolling by one whole line or column.
To play with this configuration, use the xinput program (I don't know if there's a GUI frontend for it). First, run the following command to see the name of your pointing device:
$ xinput --list
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Generic USB Mouse id=8 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Macintosh mouse button emulation id=12 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ USB Keyboard id=9 [slave keyboard (3)]
For example, in the output above, the pointer device is Generic USB mouse
. You can run the following command to list the properties that can be tuned:
xinput --list-props 'Generic USB Mouse'
The set of properties you're looking for are the “Evdev Wheel Emulation” ones. With the following settings, when the middle mouse button (button 2) is pressed, moving the mouse sends wheel events (4=up, 5=down, 6=left, 7=right).
xinput --set-prop 'Generic USB Mouse' 'Evdev Wheel Emulation' 1
xinput --set-prop 'Generic USB Mouse' 'Evdev Wheel Emulation Button' 2
xinput --set-prop 'Generic USB Mouse' 'Evdev Wheel Emulation Axes' 6 7 4 5
You may want to tweak other parameters (inertia, timeout).
You can put these commands in a script. Add #!/bin/sh
as the very first line, and make the script file executable (e.g. chmod +x ~/bin/activate-wheel-emulation.sh
). Then add that script to the list of commands to run when your session starts (gnome-session-properties
lets you configure that).
If you have root access and you want to make the change for all users (acceptable on a home machine), it's simpler to do it via the X.org server configuration file. As root, create a file called /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/wheel-emulation.conf
containing settings for the mouse driver. The settings are the same but they're organized a bit differently.
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "Wheel Emulation"
MatchProduct "Generic USB Mouse"
Option "EmulateWheel" "on"
Option "EmulateWheelButton" "2"
Option "XAxisMapping" "6 7"
Option "YAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection
Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout
parameter too much you may lose the middle mouse button (click) functionality altogether. For example, if you reduce Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout
to below the value for Evdev Middle Button Timeout
then you will no longer generate Middle Button Click events. From personal experience, the following seems to work reasonably well:
– agnussmcferguss
May 12 '15 at 03:55
xinput --set-prop 'Generic USB Mouse' 'Evdev Middle Button Emulation' 1
. xinput --set-prop 'Generic USB Mouse' 'Evdev Middle Button Timeout' 50
. xinput --set-prop 'Generic USB Mouse' 'Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout' 100
. That provides reasonably snappy click and scroll functionality, although if you find it triggers too quickly, then try increasing Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout
(I think 200 is the default)
– agnussmcferguss
May 12 '15 at 03:55
Device "evdev"
and placing double-quotes around the "EmulateWheelButton"
value of "2"
. (Apologies, I haven't time to investigate whether one or both of these changes fixes the problem.)
– Arkanon
May 30 '15 at 19:27
Device "evdev"
can make sense, did you mean Driver "evdev"
? I think this would be an alternative to the MatchProduct
directive which sets the options for all input devices rather than just generic USB mice.
– Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
May 30 '15 at 22:01
Driver "evdev"
. Too many hours of looking at man pages.
– Arkanon
May 31 '15 at 08:55
Pointer_EnableKeys
(google it or ask a new question here), and you can set up fancier behavior with XKB (search keybord: mousekeys, or ask a new question here describing exactly what you want and what you'll settle with if you can't have it exactly).
– Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
Dec 15 '15 at 09:14
this works for me, Ubuntu 20.04/20.10: Note, it works everywhere, in every application. How to do this in wayland, I don't know although it is manipulating libinput so it should be possible.
This answer is merely an example of the accepted answer.
#/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/41-libinput.conf
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "Logitech USB Receiver Mouse"
MatchIsPointer "on"
MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
Driver "libinput"
Option "ScrollButton" "2"
Option "ScrollMethod" "button"
Option "NaturalScrolling" "true"
EndSection
for chrome
you can use this extension for autoscrolling
don't forget to restart chrome after installing the extension
libinput
check my answer here. Works with any application without the need of install anything. – Pablo A Feb 03 '18 at 18:38