Felitendo
bd84c6645a
Steam writes a desktop entry for every game somebody asks for a shortcut
to, and it starts the same program the client's own entry does:
Exec=steam steam://rungameid/3527290
The scan only ever looked at the first token, found steam there, and filed
the game under the same kind as the client. So PEAK sat in the applications
list reading "on (Steam)", counted towards the applications covered, and
offered a space bar to switch it off again - as though it were something
this program had anything to offer. It is not: a game is whatever engine it
was built with, and none of them reads a Chromium argument.
An entry carrying a steam:// address of its own is not a program, it is one
more way of starting Steam. The client's own entry never has one - it takes
an address from the outside, through %U - and that is what tells the two
apart. Those entries go to the Steam module now instead of into the list.
They keep -noverifyfiles, for the same reason the rest of the Steam handling
has it: starting a game with the client closed is a Steam start like any
other, and without the switch it finds the patched web helper script, puts
its own copy back, and the interface loses autoscroll for the rest of the
session.
8.1 KiB
middleclick-autoscroll
Middle-click autoscroll — hold the middle mouse button, move the pointer, the page scrolls — in every application on the system that can do it, and in anything installed later.
There is no list of supported applications to check against and none to keep up to date. Every launcher on the system is examined, the ones running on Chromium underneath are identified by what they ship rather than by their name, and each of them is handled.
paru -S middleclick-autoscroll
middleclick-autoscroll enable
That is the whole setup. Nothing else has to be configured, and no file has to be edited.
Why this needs a program at all
Blink — the engine inside Chromium, Electron and CEF — has had Windows-style autoscroll for years. On Linux it is switched off, because middle click is already taken by primary-selection paste. One command line argument turns it back on:
--enable-blink-features=MiddleClickAutoscroll
Getting that argument into one application is a five-minute job. Getting it into all of them, in a way that survives the next package upgrade, is not:
- Some applications read a flag file, some don't.
- Some ship their own copy of Electron, some use the system one.
- Flatpaks see none of the host's configuration.
- An application that starts itself at login uses a different entry than the one in the menu, and Discord launched at login used to behave differently from Discord launched by hand.
- Steam takes no arguments for its interface at all, and puts back any file you change.
- Every upgrade can undo the lot.
The interface
middleclick-autoscroll on its own:
Middle-Click Autoscroll
Autoscroll ON
Applications covered 14 of 15
Not identified 1 - see the applications list
Steam ON
New applications ON
Last applied 3 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
[3] Applications lists everything that was found, how each one is handled, and lets a single application be switched off — or an unrecognised one switched on — with the space bar:
Applications
▸ Vesktop on (flag file)
Discord on (flag file)
Code - OSS on (flag file)
Obsidian on (flag file)
Signal on (flag file)
Spotify on (launcher)
Steam on (Steam)
Cursor cannot tell
[4] Settings has the categories — Electron and CEF applications, browsers, Flatpaks, autostart entries, Steam, Spotify, whether to watch for new applications, and a field for extra Chromium arguments if you want any.
There is a configuration file behind all of this. You are never asked to open it.
Where the argument actually goes
Two routes, picked per application.
| Flag file | Arch's Electron and Chromium wrappers read extra arguments from ~/.config/<name>-flags.conf. This is the good one: it is the supported way to pass arguments, it survives package upgrades untouched, and it applies to a launch from a terminal as much as one from the menu. |
| Desktop entry | For applications that ship their own binary with no wrapper, and for Flatpaks, a copy of the entry with the argument appended goes into ~/.local/share/applications, where it shadows the system one. |
Entries that already live in ~/.local/share/applications — AppImages, web app
shortcuts — are edited in place and the original is kept. So are the entries in
~/.config/autostart, so an application that starts itself at login gets the
same treatment as one started from the menu.
An --enable-blink-features that is already there is extended, never
repeated. Chromium keeps only the last occurrence of that option, so a second
one would silently switch off whatever the first one enabled.
Steam
Steam's interface is CEF and supports the feature perfectly well, but Steam builds the command line for its web helper itself and offers no way to add to it. The only place an argument fits is the script that starts the helper, inside Steam's own installation:
~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_64/steamwebhelper_sniper_wrap.sh
Steam compares the installed files against its manifest at every start — by
size, not by content — and restores whatever differs, so its launcher entry gets
-noverifyfiles. So does its entry in ~/.config/autostart, which Steam writes
as soon as it is set to run at login: that one bypasses the menu entry entirely,
and without the switch a Steam started at login finds the patched script,
restores it, gets patched again, and never gets past its update dialog.
The shortcuts Steam writes for single games get the switch as well. A game is not an application this program has anything to offer — none of them is a Chromium process and none appears in the applications list — but starting one with Steam closed is a Steam start like any other, and leaving the switch out there costs the interface its autoscroll for the rest of the session.
The trade-off is real: with verification off, Steam no longer repairs a damaged installation by itself. That is why Steam is a switch of its own rather than part of the general handling — turn it off in the settings and Steam is left completely alone.
The script comes back on every client update. The watcher notices and puts the patch back.
Starting Steam some other way — from a terminal, from a script — leaves the switch out and Steam puts its own copy back for that session. The patch returns at the next apply with Steam closed; it is deliberately not repeated while the client is running, because the two would only undo each other and the helper is started once, at the start.
Applications installed later
A systemd user path unit watches every directory a launcher can appear in —
/usr/share/applications, the Flatpak exports, ~/.local/share/applications,
~/.config/autostart — plus Steam's helper script. Anything new is handled
within a second of being installed, whether it came from pacman, the AUR,
Flatpak or an AppImage manager. There is no hook to install per package manager.
What it will not guess
An AppImage keeps its payload in a compressed filesystem, so there is no way to tell from the outside whether Chromium is in there. Those show up as cannot tell and are left alone until you switch them on from the applications screen.
Detection is deliberately conservative everywhere else too. A wrong "yes" would append an unknown argument to something that is not Chromium, and plenty of programs treat an unrecognised argument as a file name to open.
Undoing it
middleclick-autoscroll disable
Every change is recorded in a ledger as it is made, and disable replays it
backwards: generated entries are deleted, edited files are restored from their
backups, flag files that only ever contained our line are removed, and a flag
file that was merged into loses exactly the one feature that was added to it.
Files that were not touched by this program are not touched by it now either.
Run this before uninstalling the package.
Commands
middleclick-autoscroll |
the menu above |
… enable |
turn it on, apply, start watching |
… disable |
turn it off and put everything back |
… apply |
apply to anything new (this is what the watcher calls) |
… apply --rebuild |
take everything back and apply it again, to repair a mess |
… status |
what is covered |
… list |
every application that was found and how it is handled |
See man middleclick-autoscroll for the details.
Requirements
Arch or an Arch derivative (CachyOS, EndeavourOS, Manjaro), bash, systemd for the watcher. Nothing outside your home directory is ever written to, and running it as root is refused.
Building from source
make
sudo make install
make check runs bash -n and, if installed, shellcheck over every script.
License
GPL-3.0-or-later.