Middle Click Desktop Menu Isn't Working

I can’t assign it to any of the menu options (applications/switch windows/switch desktops/etc)…I mean I can, but it’s meaningless because nothing happens when I actually use the middle mouse button. I thought this might be a KDE thing, but when I asked on the KDE forums someone else also replied that they had this issue with Manjaro: Middle Mouse Actions Not Working on Desktop • KDE Community Forums

Confirmed here too. I had it set to display a list of Activities, but now it’s not doing anything anymore.

I doubt that it would be Manjaro-specific. The person reporting it at the KDE forum was running openSUSE Tumbleweed, and I saw only one person mentioning Manjaro.

:man_shrugging:

I was the person reporting it at KDE…that guy on openSUSE was a reply to my post…

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If you type coredumpctl is there anything current?

no idea what coredumpctl is, but just going off of a hunch that I’m to type coredumctl in Konsole, all that shows at the end of the scroll is apps that I’m running…

Probably more likely apps that aren’t running :slight_smile:, or at least not running well.

What does the last line look like?

The console command, man coredumpctl will explain. Another command a linux user needs to know is journalctl to read the system log.

My last core dump was this evening and the program was “/usr/bin/kglobalaccel5”. In the journal it says “Failed to start KDE Global Shortcuts Server”. I have the middle-mouse button set to “paste” and it works, but if I set it to “Application Launcher” it does not. I’m wondering if they are related.

Forget the coredumps, I believe that is another issue.

I came across something interesting. When you set the “Mouse Action” click the button to the left that says “Middle Button”. The button text will change to “Input”. Click the button you want, the middle button. When I did this it started working. Don’t forget to click “Apply”.

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Oh, that does work. Thanks, stargazer!

I hope it continues to work. :pray: :grimacing:

Me thinks these are KDE bugs, like these open bug reports:

Can’t find this setting, can you point me in the right direction?

Tried that, but it makes no difference here at my end. :man_shrugging:


Right-click the desktop and choose “Configure Desktop and Wallpaper” from the popup menu. Then click on “Mouse Actions”.

This is in addition to @Aragorn comment.
If you don’t have a “Middle-Button” and you want it, you might need to add it. When you click “Add” the button text will change to “Input Here”. This is where you just simulate the mouse action you are trying to configure. Once an action is configured, the action itself can be changed by clicking.

There is some KDE Documentation here:
https://docs.kde.org/trunk5/en/kde-workspace/plasma-desktop/desktop.html

Thanks!

I’m going to narrow issues down to two Desktop Configuration Mouse action issues. Case 1 has a solution. Case 2 currently does not.

Case 1 - MidButton is now MiddleButton

Steps:

  1. Create a new user

  2. head -n 5 $HOME/.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc

    The output is:

    ActionPlugins][0]
    MidButton;NoModifier=org.kde.paste
    RightButton;NoModifier=org.kde.contextmenu
    wheel:Vertical;NoModifier=org.kde.switchdesktop

    The MidButton will not work.

  3. Right click > Configure Desktop and Wallpaper > Mouse Actions

  4. Click the button with the text “MiddleButton”, and input the action for middle button (i.e., click the wheel). Apply it.

  5. Repeat Step 2. There will be a new line added.

    MiddleButton;NoModifier=org.kde.paste

NOTE: The old one remains and will appear in the Mouse Actions window.

Case 2 - Mouse wheel does not work as a Mouse Action on Folder View Desktop

  1. Create a new user

  2. Right click > Configure Desktop and Wallpaper

  3. Confirm the default Wallpaper Layout is “Folder View”. The wheel works if the Layout is “Desktop”.

  4. Goto Mouse Actions and confirm “Vertical-Scroll” is “Switch Desktop”

  5. Try rolling the mouse wheel on the desktop. It does not work.

  6. Try rolling the mouse wheel on the Pager. It works.

The wheel works to switch virtual desktops on a Folder View Desktop, in a current OpenSuse Tumbleweed at the same levels of plasma, framework, qt as Manjaro.
There is a bug report, #419867.

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Actually, on my system, it now appears to be called ExtraButton6, and with that designation, I can indeed get it to work. :astonished:

Identifying devices and events is still like this in 2020?

Not normally, no. Which is why I suspect some weird bug to have crept into the current Plasma release. :thinking:

The MouseButton enum lists a number of values:
https://code.qt.io/cgit/qt/qtbase.git/tree/src/corelib/global/qnamespace.h?h=5.15.2

But it definitely shows that “MidButton” is deprecated. At the site above, the highest QT version for 5 was 5.15.2, after that they went to version 6. I wonder what it means that distributions have 5.20.4.

Summary
enum MouseButton {
        NoButton         = 0x00000000,
        LeftButton       = 0x00000001,
        RightButton      = 0x00000002,
        MiddleButton     = 0x00000004,
#if QT_DEPRECATED_SINCE(5, 15) // commented as such since 4.7.0
        MidButton Q_DECL_ENUMERATOR_DEPRECATED_X("MidButton is deprecated. Use MiddleButton instead") = MiddleButton,
#endif
        BackButton       = 0x00000008,
        XButton1         = BackButton,
        ExtraButton1     = XButton1,
        ForwardButton    = 0x00000010,
        XButton2         = ForwardButton,
        ExtraButton2     = ForwardButton,
        TaskButton       = 0x00000020,
        ExtraButton3     = TaskButton,
        ExtraButton4     = 0x00000040,
        ExtraButton5     = 0x00000080,
        ExtraButton6     = 0x00000100,
        ExtraButton7     = 0x00000200,
        ExtraButton8     = 0x00000400,
        ExtraButton9     = 0x00000800,
        ExtraButton10    = 0x00001000,
        ExtraButton11    = 0x00002000,
        ExtraButton12    = 0x00004000,
        ExtraButton13    = 0x00008000,
        ExtraButton14    = 0x00010000,
        ExtraButton15    = 0x00020000,
        ExtraButton16    = 0x00040000,
        ExtraButton17    = 0x00080000,
        ExtraButton18    = 0x00100000,
        ExtraButton19    = 0x00200000,
        ExtraButton20    = 0x00400000,
        ExtraButton21    = 0x00800000,
        ExtraButton22    = 0x01000000,
        ExtraButton23    = 0x02000000,
        ExtraButton24    = 0x04000000,
        AllButtons       = 0x07ffffff,
        MaxMouseButton   = ExtraButton24,
        // 4 high-order bits remain available for future use (0x08000000 through 0x40000000).
        MouseButtonMask  = 0xffffffff
    };
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