As a Linux user, there are so many ways to use the middle mouse button on my mouse. Today, I will share the most useful features, of which also work on every system!

Open Anything in a New Tab

If you browse the web a lot, especially with only a mouse in your hand on your bed, you'll probably find middle-click useful. Here are things you can open in a new tab using middle-click:

  • Links! Instead of using the usual 2 hands combo Ctrl+Left-click.
  • Go back to previous page, go to forward page, reload current page, or go to your home page. Yes, you can use middle-click to open a new tab anywhere, even your web browsers' navigation buttons!
  • Your history and bookmarks. This is useful, for example, when you have a ton of bookmarks you want to open. It's definitely faster and more convenient than using Ctrl+Left-click combo.

On Linux, you can use middle-click to open a folder, go back-forward to a folder, etc. from within your system's file manager, too!

Close a Tab... Easily

Of course, you can also use middle-click to close a tab by clicking on the tab you want to close instead of a tiny close tab button.

And again, this also works everywhere, your system's file manager on Linux included.

Open File/s with a Middle-click

Normally, you would double-click to open a file in your system's file manager.

But on Linux, you can middle-click a file to open it. Or you can select multiple files, then middle-click only one of them to open all of them at once in their responsible apps.

Open a New App Instance

Ever wondered if there is a way to open another window/instance of an app instead of switching to it? Yes, on Linux - GNOME, you can use middle mouse click for this without ever having to go through the right-click's menu!

Scroll Web Pages with Ease

This feature works on every system, since it's the feature from within web browsers. It's called autoscroll. By default, Firefox activates autoscroll with middle-click. So, it works out of the box.

Chromium browsers, on the other hand, have this feature out of the box only on Windows. On macOS and Linux, the users need to enable autoscroll from within the browser engine, Blink.

Fortunately, if you're using Brave, you can enable autoscroll easily from brave://flags/#middle-button-autoscroll, since the feature is patched by Brave team.

If you're using other Chromium browsers, Chrome for example, you can enable autoscroll by using this command-line flag: --enable-blink-features=MiddleClickAutoscroll.

You can edit the desktop file using MenuLibre, or launching Chrome from the terminal with this execute line:

google-chrome-stable --enable-blink-features=MiddleClickAutoscroll %U

Yes, you don't need to install an extension just to use autoscroll. I wrote about issues with web browsers' extensions in my previous article. In short, it's best to avoid using them unless absolutely necessary.

Copy and Paste Texts

This could be the most useful Linux feature yet, as it seems like Windows and macOS don't offer this feature out of the box.

Basically, you can copy selected texts in your web browsers using middle-click. Then you can middle-click anywhere else to paste the copied text! Middle-click to paste is very useful if you want to paste a line of copied code into the terminal, as you can't simply paste with Ctrl+V in the terminal, i.e. you need Ctrl+Shift+V, a 3 buttons combo, to paste in the terminal.

And here is the ultimate [hidden]feature of middle-click in your web browsers. You can copy some texts, then middle-click new tab button, the browser will start searching the copied texts right away!

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This is all for today. I hope this is useful in this territory. If you like it, please let me know in the comment section below. Bye 💨

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Cover Photo by Frenjamin Benklin on Unsplash