Feature Request: Mouse/Touch/Pointer Bindings (like middle-click paste, right-click context menu, etc.)

[carlos-zamora]

Summary of the new feature/enhancement

Expand settings to be able to define remappable mouse bindings. Arguably, different touch events should fall under this too. So let's just call this "pointer bindings" for now.

Proposed technical implementation details (optional)

Mouse bindings are a bit trickier than keybindings in that the mouse has a location where the event occurs. For example, right-clicking a tab should have a different effect on the terminal than right-clicking the terminal.

As a super early idea, consider this format:

"pointerbindings": [
{
  "device": "mouse",
  "event": "rightClick",
  "where": "tab",
  "command": "flyoutMenu"
},
{
  "device": "mouse",
  "event": "doubleClick",
  "where": "terminal",
  "command": "wordSelection"  
},
{
  "device": "touch",
  "event": "swipe",
  "where": "terminal",
  "command": "scroll"
}
]

We definitely need a spec for this because it'll be a bit hefty. We'll also need to update a decent amount of documentation (particularly settings schema) to be able to describe what combinations are acceptable (again, the JSON mentioned up here is just me rambling about a potential implementation.)

There may be overlap between some commands in keybindings. Be sure to think that through.

Mike notes:

we should go back and collect up all the threads we've said "this would be a good mouse bindings feature" below

---

spec draft

Mouse bindings

Abstract

We've had numerous requests to configure how the mouse behaves in the Terminal.
The original behavior was a simple duplication of how conhost behaved: a right
click will copy the a selection if there is one, or paste the clipboard if there
isn't. Over time, we've accumulated a number of scenarios that we believe can
all be addressed by allowing more fine-grained mouse binding support. However,
upon further review, ultimately, we don't really need deep mouse binding
support.

Scenarios

The following is a list of all the feature requests we've linked to mouse
bindings in the past, grouped into categories of related requests:

Change how mouse multi-click selects

• #7173 Multiple sets of word delimiters for double-click selection
• #9881 Limit triple-click selection to command field only
• #6511 Multi-click selection granularity
• [Feature Request: Smart Double-click Selection (regeces?) #3196] Feature Request: Smart Double-click Selection (regeces?)

Change the action that L/M/R-mouse performs

• #7646 xterm-style selection, paste on middle click, copy on mouse release
• #10802 - VK_XBUTTON1/2, etc.
• #6250 - separate "Paste Clipboard" vs "Paste Selection" actions
• #3337 - Add a right-click context menu

Other

These are smaller, independent features that could all have an individual setting (if needed)

• #11710 Request: Setting to disable zooming with ctrl+mousewheel
• #13598 Add option to configure URL clicking behavior
• #11906 Option to disable "Pinch to Zoom"
• #6182 Fast scroll by holding down Alt while scrolling with mouse wheel
• Block selection by default (without alt) (see mail thread "RE: How to disable line wrap selection in Terminal")
• #17610 Configure block select to use ctrl, not alt

Solution design

Following the above scenarios, solutions are proposed below:

Change how mouse multi-click selects

Across the requests here, we've got the following requests:

• double-click: selects a "word" between 2 same delimiters
• triple-click: selects an entire string separated by spaces
• 4-click: entire line

Currently, Ctrl+A will select the entire command/text input, however, triple
clicking (mouse version of Select All selects the entire line (including the
prompt). GIF shows selecting with mouse vs with keyboard:
...
I would like the triple click action to align to the Ctrl+A selection method.

Could we maybe add shift double click to select using alternate word
delimiters?

I was really thinking more of regex though, because it can be a good starting
point for implementing more advanced features like type-specific smart
highlighting and hyperlinking of terminal text, not just smart selection.

To boil this down, users want to be able to configure the behavior of double,
triple, and quadruple clicks. The most common request is to change the
delimiters for double-click selection. But users also want to be able to
configure the delimiters to change on
Shift/Alt/Ctrl clicks.

"mouse": {
    "clicks": {
        { "click": "double", "command": { "action": "expandSelection", "delimeters": " /\\()\"'-.,:;<>~!@#$%^&*|+=[]{}~?\u2502" } }
        { "click": "shift+double", "command": { "action": "expandSelection", "delimeters": " " } }
        { "click": "triple", "command": { "action": "expandSelection", "regex": "^.*$" } }
    }
}

Alternatively,

"mouse": {
    "doubleClick": " /\\()\"'-.,:;<>~!@#$%^&*|+=[]{}~?\u2502",
    "tripleClick": { "regex": "^.*$" }
}

[carlos-zamora]

A few things:

• Treat this as a megathread so feel free to share your ideas here 😁
• I'm a bit busy with Accessibility (TOP PRIORITY) at the moment so if anybody wants to start working on this, just let me know.

[philippeller]

Probably related, make for example scrolling work when using vim etc....used to work fine for example in WSL terminal

[DHowett-MSFT]

make .. scrolling work .. vim

That is not related. That is #376 then #545.

[schorrm]

Can I pile on here -- can we get two finger scrolling on the mousepad?

[cerebrate]

A small point that's probably obvious, but just to make sure it's said, can we make sure the default is and the defaults are to pass through mouse events within the terminal to the underlying VT, per #545?

Customizability I like, but not as much as not breaking anything that would otherwise work. If someone's using, for example, tmux mouse support in conhost, they shouldn't have to grovel through the options to figure out why it doesn't work in Terminal.

[zadjii-msft]

Though it's also being discussed in #524, I want to make sure it's tracked here that some people might not want copy-on-select. So that needs to somehow be included in these bindings. Though, that might make sense as a different setting, since I'm not sure if there are any other "onSelect" actions that would possibly make sense.

[vyevdokimov]

Add something like "lines to scroll" option - in some cases scroll is too fast in terminal using touchpad.

[samheuck]

Is this issue dead? It's been... going on nearly 4 years since it was opened now?

I like using "Windows Terminal", but there's still no way I can find to disable "right-click to paste" / "QuickEdit" like you can in PowerShell.

[cloud-66]

i used to middle click paste, and it's hard for me to use windows terminal without this function. i love wt , but it still doesn't have this.

[korpa]

i used to middle click paste, and it's hard for me to use windows terminal without this function. i love wt , but it still doesn't have this.

Same here. This is the reason why I switched Windows Terminal to Alacritty a couple of weeks ago.

[amkartashov]

simple autohotkey script to paste on middle button:

; Paste with middle mouse in Windows Terminal
#IfWinActive ahk_class CASCADIA_HOSTING_WINDOW_CLASS
MButton::Send ^{vk56} ; Send Ctrl-V with middle button
#IfWinActive

[zadjii-msft]

Is this issue dead? It's been... going on nearly 4 years since it was opened now?

Nope, there's just plenty of other higher-priority work unfortunately. I've got a draft PR for an experimental setting just for the right-click context menu over in #14775. We however don't have a full spec for how we'd actually like to express the fullness of mouse bindings. That's the biggest blocker here - someone taking the time to enumerate what people have asked for and what's possible, and putting them together into a spec.

• Do folks want to bind arbitrary actions to mouse buttons, or really only a subset of actions?
• Does this become an extension of bindings, with new "keys" values to indicate mouse buttons?
• Should configuring the number of lines to scroll be a part of this? Like, rebinding mouseWheelDown to scrollDown(5)? Or is that a separate (but related) setting?
• How do we represent multi-clicks and multi-click actions? (|double|triple)(Left|Middle|Right)Click seems... verbose...

Those are the thoughts from the top of the dome. If someone wants to put together a proposal, I'd love to review it. Writing the code shouldn't be that hard, so long as we have the right de# place ☺️

[hmb]

Well, the most pressing issue is probably to just paste the clipboard with the middle mouse button. As many linux terminals, e.g. in VMs, X-Servers like Xming, even in the windows version of git-bash, "paste" is always the middle mouse click. So using the right click in ms-terminal makes it kind of random to which click has to be used:

• git-bash native -> middle click
• git-bash embedded in ms-terminal -> right click
• linux VM -> middle click

Guess what: you always use the wrong one. So in terms of a hamonized user exp would suffice for starters to "paste" with middle mouse button. The "generic covering all eventualities mouse configurator" is probably overkill for all those working in a hybrid environment.

[lucky-wolf]

Wow, 5y and not solved?

A trivial way to disable "quickedit" would suffice.

[zadjii-msft]

I mean, there is: experimental.rightClickContextMenu

[TheZetner]

simple autohotkey script to paste on middle button:

; Paste with middle mouse in Windows Terminal
#IfWinActive ahk_class CASCADIA_HOSTING_WINDOW_CLASS
MButton::Send ^{vk56} ; Send Ctrl-V with middle button
#IfWinActive

Just updated this to AHK 2.0:

; Paste with middle mouse in Windows Terminal
#HotIf WinActive("ahk_class CASCADIA_HOSTING_WINDOW_CLASS")
MButton::Send "^{vk56}" ; Send Ctrl-V with middle button

[psergiu]

It's 2024 and it's still not added :( Some companies don't allow the use of AutoHotKey on work machines. Please just add a simple "X11-style middle mouse button paste" option and it's perfect. If there's time to add more options in the future, even better.
Thank you.

[psergiu]

The lack of this simple feature has lost Microsoft more licensing revenue just at companies I worked at than it would have cost to pay a developer for a full year to implement-it. Apple is very thankful for all the Macs sold because "Windows Terminal is not compatible with our Linux servers"

[jemand771]

can y'all PLEASE stop venting your frustration in github issues?
this feature request has been liked by 133 people, most of which I'd assume are subscribed to notifications.

please consider how many patiently waiting users (who are in the same situation as you!) you're pinging vs. what you actually achieve here before posting.

[zadjii-msft]

Prelle's comment was deleted because it was whinging. This:

does not bring anything valuable to this conversation. I won't stand for whinging. Productive, constructive discussion - that I'm more than happy to have.

The lack of this simple feature has lost Microsoft more licensing revenue

I'd love to see concrete evidence that the lack of middle-click-to-paste in the Terminal is truly causing Microsoft to lose revenue. Genuinely: solid evidence of that would probably allow us to instantaneously prioritize this work. Rarely do we get the opportunity to directly correlate individual features in a developer tool to direct dollars and cents. Please, if you have that data, I'd love to share it.

---

Once again: I'd be more than willing to listen to and review a proposal here. It's a complicated problem space, to try and appropriately map all the requests to proper mouse bindings here.

My notes from: #1553 (comment) still apply.

The last attempt I made at this was in 2024, and I pushed my notes here: main...dev/migrie/s/1553-mouse-bindings. ¹ I got bogged down in the potential syntax to address the multitude of linked features here.

Footnotes

1. genuinely, I remember writing more than that, but I've had a kid since then so I forgot where I may have put any other notes I had. Push early and often folks. ↩

[johny-mnemonic]

@zadjii-msft Unfortunately it looks like we are asking for making one small fixed window openable and your reply is that until your team figures out how to completely rebuild the whole cathedral that small window will remain fixed😢

I hope this explains the source of frustration and maybe even sparks some interest in actually solving this simple issue without the need to wait for the complete re-factor of the Terminal controls🙏

[zadjii-msft]

Implementing it in the control itself would be fairly trivial. Authoring a JSON schema that can be used to consisely describe the breadth of what people what to be able to configure about the mouse - that's hard. That's what I'm very open to suggestions on.

[psergiu]

For starters, just being able to paste with the middle mouse button would appease a lot of Unix/Linux people.
X11 XTerm has middle-mouse: paste, right-mouse: extend existing selection.
Thank you !

[venzy]

Thanks Mike, I wonder whether short-medium term, a per profile option or two a bit like PuTTY has would suffice? In PuTTy - Radio selection: a. Middle extends, Right brings up menu b. Middle extends, Right pastes c. Right extends, Middle pastes I’d add: d. Middle pastes, Right brings up menu - that’s what many gnome-terminal and perhaps other users are used to. It’s what I would use, even in PowerShell and Cmd terminals. Cheers, -Dave

…

On Tue, 25 Feb 2025 at 5:46 am, psergiu ***@***.***> wrote: For starters, just being able to paste with the middle mouse button would appease a lot of Unix/Linux people. X11 XTerm has middle-mouse: paste, right-mouse: extend existing selection. Thank you ! — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1553 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAPBQUKUKR2STSA2AZZNTAD2RNZHVAVCNFSM6AAAAABXSJS3BWVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDMNZZGQ4DIOBTHA> . You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: ***@***.***> [image: psergiu]*psergiu* left a comment (microsoft/terminal#1553) <#1553 (comment)> For starters, just being able to paste with the middle mouse button would appease a lot of Unix/Linux people. X11 XTerm has middle-mouse: paste, right-mouse: extend existing selection. Thank you ! — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1553 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAPBQUKUKR2STSA2AZZNTAD2RNZHVAVCNFSM6AAAAABXSJS3BWVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDMNZZGQ4DIOBTHA> . You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>