I upgraded to Fedora 44 a few days ago and immediately noticed something was wrong in GNOME Terminal. Highlighting text no longer felt like it was copying anything, and middle-click paste had stopped working entirely. I have been using Linux on the desktop for over a decade and this workflow is muscle memory at this point: select text in one terminal, middle-click in another, done. No Ctrl+C, no Ctrl+V.

It turns out nothing was broken in GNOME Terminal itself. GNOME changed the default.

Two clipboards on Linux Link to heading

On X11 (and still on Wayland, when enabled), Linux traditionally has two separate clipboards:

  • CLIPBOARD — what you get with explicit Copy/Paste (Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V). This behaves like Windows and macOS.
  • PRIMARY — updated when you select text. You paste it with the middle mouse button, without ever pressing Copy.

The Freedesktop clipboard specification describes PRIMARY as something expert users use; regular users can ignore it. That framing matters, because GNOME’s recent change is essentially “we agree, so we turned it off for everyone by default.”

What Fedora 44 / GNOME 50 changed Link to heading

The setting lives in GSettings as org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-enable-primary-paste. When it is true, GTK applications honor primary selection for middle-click paste. When it is false, middle-click does nothing useful in those apps.

The default flipped from true to false in gsettings-desktop-schemas merge request !119, opened by Jordan Petridis in January 2026. His merge request description calls primary paste an “X11ism” tied to the old Gtk/EnablePrimaryPaste XSetting (GNOME bug 775844), and argues that accidental middle-clicks dumping clipboard contents without warning is bad UX. The MR closes with “Goodbye X11.”

The schema key itself is defined here (note <default>false</default>):

<key name="gtk-enable-primary-paste" type="b">
  <default>false</default>
  <summary>Enable the primary paste selection</summary>
  <description>
    If true, gtk+ uses the primary paste selection, usually triggered by a middle mouse button click.
  </description>
</key>

Source: org.gnome.desktop.interface.gschema.xml in the gsettings-desktop-schemas repository.

Fedora 44 ships GNOME 50, which picks up that new default. So after upgrade, existing users who never touched the setting suddenly lose middle-click paste — and the “select to copy” workflow feels broken because the only paste path they used for it is gone.

How I fixed it Link to heading

Re-enable primary paste for your user:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-enable-primary-paste true

Verify:

gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-enable-primary-paste

Open a new GNOME Terminal tab or window after changing the setting; already-running windows may not pick it up immediately.

You can also toggle this in GNOME Tweaks if you prefer a GUI (the option is exposed there on recent GNOME versions).

This is not a Wayland regression (exactly) Link to heading

I am running a Wayland session (echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE → wayland). Wayland has supported primary selection for years; GNOME documented the initiative here. The Fedora Project Wayland features wiki still lists primary selection under historical blockers for older releases.

What changed in Fedora 44 is policy and defaults, not missing Wayland plumbing.

The discussion is worth reading Link to heading

People have strong feelings about this, on both sides.

For disabling it by default: accidental middle-click paste can leak sensitive text (passwords, tokens) into the wrong window, especially during screen sharing. The Freedesktop wiki’s “easter egg for experts” language is cited in coverage such as It’s FOSS: middle-click paste likely disabled in future GNOME. Jordan Petridis also posted about the coordinated GNOME/Firefox effort on Mastodon.

Against disabling it by default: long-time Linux users rely on primary selection constantly. We liked this setting because it made a tiny, repeated workflow feel instant, which is exactly the kind of habit change xkcd 1172: Workflow jokes about. Several LWN readers noted that Fedora 44 shipped without prominent release-note mention, leaving users to discover the breakage on their own — see the middle-click paste thread under Fedora Linux 44 has been released. Ubuntu users hit the same surprise (Bug 2145179 discussion).

Mozilla opened a parallel change for Firefox: Phabricator D277804.

Quick reference Link to heading

What you want What to use
Explicit copy/paste Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V (CLIPBOARD)
Select text, paste with middle button PRIMARY (requires gtk-enable-primary-paste true)
Re-enable on GNOME gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-enable-primary-paste true

If you upgraded to Fedora 44 and your terminal “stopped copying” when you highlight text, try the gsettings line above before you spend an hour debugging VTE or wl-clipboard.