middleclick-autoscroll/README.md

middleclick-autoscroll

middleclick-autoscroll (what a great name, wow) is a CLI for linux that enables autoscroll in every application that supports it. Works with browsers, electron apps like discord and spotify, steam, and anything else that runs on chromium.

This tool looks at which of your apps run chromium under the hood and applies the necessary steps to get autoscrolling working (often just a feature flag). One install, one command and autoscroll ✨just works✨ (like on windows).

How to use

Just run middleclick-autoscroll. This will open the configuration TUI that looks like this:

  Middle-Click Autoscroll

  Autoscroll                     ON

  Applications covered           11 of 13
  Not identified                 1 (see the applications list)
  Steam                          ON
  New applications               ON
  Middle-click paste             off
  Last applied                   2 minutes ago

  Applications pick this up the next time they are started.

  [1] Turn autoscroll on or off
  [2] Re-apply everything
  [3] Applications
  [4] Settings
  [q] Quit

  >

Normally you just need to press [1] and the magic is done. Pressing [3] lets you see every app that was found and toggle each one individually.

  Applications

  ▸ Steam                              on (Steam)
    Chromium                           on (launcher)
    Discord                            on (flag file)
    Obsidian                           on (launcher)
    Spotify                            on (launcher)
    Slack                              off
    Cursor                             cannot tell

  Up/Down: select, Space: turn on or off, q: back

You can also press [4] for more settings.

How to install

Arch

yay -S middleclick-autoscroll

Fedora

sudo curl -fsSL -o /etc/yum.repos.d/middleclick-autoscroll.repo \
  https://loonixtools.github.io/middleclick-autoscroll/middleclick-autoscroll.repo
sudo dnf install middleclick-autoscroll

Bazzite

sudo curl -fsSL -o /etc/yum.repos.d/middleclick-autoscroll.repo \
  https://loonixtools.github.io/middleclick-autoscroll/middleclick-autoscroll.repo
sudo rpm-ostree install middleclick-autoscroll
systemctl reboot

Debian

sudo install -d -m 0755 /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://loonixtools.github.io/middleclick-autoscroll/KEY.gpg \
  | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/middleclick-autoscroll.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/middleclick-autoscroll.gpg] https://loonixtools.github.io/middleclick-autoscroll/deb ./" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/middleclick-autoscroll.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install middleclick-autoscroll

openSUSE

sudo rpm --import https://loonixtools.github.io/middleclick-autoscroll/KEY.gpg
sudo zypper addrepo --gpgcheck --refresh \
  https://loonixtools.github.io/middleclick-autoscroll/rpm middleclick-autoscroll
sudo zypper install middleclick-autoscroll

How it works

Blink (the engine in Chromium, Electron, and CEF) already has autoscroll, but it's off on Linux by default because middle click normally pastes the clipboard (??). This flag turns it on:

--enable-blink-features=MiddleClickAutoscroll

But doing that for every app is kinda bothersome and it also might break with updates. That's why I created this small tool to automate that.

Browsers get the same thing but this time without "blink":

--enable-features=MiddleClickAutoscroll

But both do the same ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Except in Helium and Brave, which have their own names for it (HeliumMiddleClickAutoscroll, and Brave's is actually spelled MiddelButtonClickAutoscroll), so browsers get those as well.

New apps are picked up by a systemd path unit that watches the relevant directories. If you hate systemd; middleclick-autoscroll apply does the same thing manually.

AppImages get looked into as well. The payload is a squashfs image glued onto the runtime, and squashfs keeps a small table with the name of every file in there. So that table gets read and unpacked (a few kb, nothing is extracted and the thing is never run) and the Chromium files are looked for in it. An Electron AppImage is covered like any other app; a Tauri one is left alone, because WebKitGTK simply has no autoscroll to switch on.

Commands

Command
middleclick-autoscroll	Interactive menu
… enable	Turn on, apply, start watching
… disable	Undo everything
… apply	Apply to new apps
… apply --rebuild	Redo from scratch
… status	What's covered
… list	All apps and how they're handled

Building from source

make
sudo make install

Optionally needs msgfmt (gettext) for translations and scdoc for the man page. Supports PREFIX and DESTDIR. make check runs syntax checks and shellcheck.

See packaging/README.md for release builds and repo signing.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later.