"This is a little known feature and behavior that leads into user confusion when they click the middle mouse button without knowing about its functionality. Most of the time, its [sic] also clicked by accident, and its [sic] very weird o [sic] have the clipboard dumped on such occasions. The feature is also not discoverable at all, and even on the Freedesktop wiki page, the entirity [sic] of the "PRIMARY" selection is reffered [sic] to as an "easter egg"."
"The clipboard is a separate thing. Middle-clicking pastes any currently selected text at the insertion point, including in a terminal emulator, without affecting the clipboard. That's why we like it. For instance, you can select and copy the title of a webpage, then select the URL, then switch to another window, paste the title with Ctrl+V, and then paste the URL with a middle-click, without two round trips between the apps."
GNOME intends to remove middle-click paste from its default behavior, labeling the feature an "X11ism" and explicitly moving away from it. A parallel proposal targets Firefox to disable the same functionality, citing accidental activation, low discoverability, and user confusion. The bug report contains spelling and punctuation errors and mischaracterizes the mechanism as dumping the clipboard. In reality, middle-click pastes the PRIMARY selection without affecting the clipboard, enabling separate paste operations and efficient workflows. The behavior has existed for many years, with documented references at least as far back as 2004, though general awareness remains limited.
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