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  • touchpad copy paste not working

    From Paul Scott@3:633/10 to All on Tuesday, June 09, 2026 03:30:01
    Debian sid XFCE Lenovo ThinkBook 20SL

    Copy paste doesn't seem to work. At least I haven't found a way to middle-click on the touchpad to do the paste. I haven't had this problem before.

    TIA for any ideas on debugging this,

    Paul

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Dan Ritter@3:633/10 to All on Tuesday, June 09, 2026 04:10:01
    Paul Scott wrote:
    Debian sid XFCE Lenovo ThinkBook 20SL

    Copy paste doesn't seem to work. At least I haven't found a way to middle-click on the touchpad to do the paste. I haven't had this problem before.

    TIA for any ideas on debugging this,


    xinput list
    to list all your input devices. Identify your touchpad, then

    xinput list-props DEVICE
    to look for the properties that can be set, then

    xinput set-prop DEVICE PROPERTY VALUE
    to set properties.

    You will be looking for things like "middle emulation" or "three
    finger tap" or such.

    -dsr-

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Dan Ritter@3:633/10 to All on Tuesday, June 09, 2026 17:40:02
    Paul Scott wrote:

    On 6/9/26 4:47 AM, Dan Ritter wrote:

    (snip)
    The property you want to set is 336. The value you want is 1.
    You didn't show me the device, but you probably want to quote
    the whole label, because the device number can change when you
    plug and unplug USB devices.

    So run

    xinput set-prop "WHOLE DEVICE NAME HERE" 336 1

    and you get middle button emulation enabled.

    Thank you!

    Works with device no. or name.

    I'm using the copy paste to make a set of notes including your comment about using the device name.

    How is 337 related? should it be set?

    libinput Middle Emulation Enabled Default (337): 0

    It's *possible* that setting this will store the setting in the
    touchpad's firmware, so you don't have to do this on every USB
    reset, and it's worth finding out.

    But that's not guaranteed. You'll want to put the set-prop in
    something which runs right after your X11 or Wayland desktop
    starts.

    The process as a whole - xinput list, xinput list-props, xinput
    set-prop - is widely applicable to changing options for mice,
    trackballs, trackpads, touchscreens, and even keyboards.

    -dsr-

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Max Nikulin@3:633/10 to All on Wednesday, June 10, 2026 04:10:01
    On 09/06/2026 10:21 pm, Dan Ritter wrote:
    But that's not guaranteed. You'll want to put the set-prop in
    something which runs right after your X11 or Wayland desktop
    starts.

    It seems, some messages were off-list. I am not sure that the following
    Xorg config snippet does exactly what the topic starter needs. At least
    it shows how to use global config, see libinput(4):

    /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-libinput.conf

    Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "touchpad tap-to-click"
    MatchIsTouchpad "on"
    Option "Tapping" "on"
    EndSection

    I have another "Section", but it remained from experiments with
    synaptics driver instead of libinput, so it should be irrelevant.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)