Disable Middle Click Paste

An annoying little feature of Firefox emerges when you surf on Linux, I was quite baffled at first to whether it was actually a feature or my system had been compromised, as seemingly random pages would just load up for no apparent reason.

The cause was that as you can highlight something and use the middle click to paste in *nix systems, Firefox takes the initiative to do a Google I’m Feeling Lucky query on the string in your clipboard if you happen to middle click on an open window. I found that as I was using the click-scroll feature of the mouse, this would happen every so often.

Luckily there’s a very easy fix. Load up about:config in the address bar, filter by “middle” and double click on the entry that says middlemouse.contentLoadURL to change it to false. That’s it, no more annoyances. On a more sinister note, the BrainLog understandably construes this “feature” as a potential security risk, so that gives you another reason to turn it off.