[SOLVED] gnome/Wayland: middle-mouse-button paste stopped working

moormaster · 2026-04-12 15:20:51

In some application selecting text and pasting it anywhere using the middle mouse button stopped working:

- gnome-shell
- gnome-text-editor
- gvim

... in firefox it still works for some reason though.

Was there any breaking change regarding the middle-mouse-button paste feature in recent updates?

Last edited by moormaster (2026-04-12 16:32:47)

moormaster · 2026-04-12 16:03:02

It seems there is a dconf-setting /org/gnome/desktop/interface/gtk-enable-primary-paste which since 2016 that used to default to true.

Setting this to true fixes the issue for me:

dconf write /org/gnome/desktop/interface/gtk-enable-primary-paste true

Edit: The default for this setting was changed to false 3 months ago.

Last edited by moormaster (2026-04-12 16:32:18)

palba · 2026-04-13 10:30:04

Using Manjaro Gnome (Wayland now compulsory), I confirm both the problem and the solution, thank you.

Arch Linux