[!NOTE]

🏁 MiddleClick is finished

It stays here, free and GPL-3.0, and brew install --cask middleclick keeps working. Nothing removed, no nags, no telemetry.

The middle click it gave you — three-finger click and three-finger tap — is free forever in WheelClick, its from-scratch successor, built on the documented, supported part of macOS.

The full story →

🔍 Usage

It's more than just ⌘+click

System-wide · close tabs by middleclicking on them

In Safari · middleclicking on a link opens it in the background as a new tab

In Terminal · paste selected text

Install

Via 🍺 Homebrew (Recommended)

brew install --cask middleclick

Check out the cask if you're interested

Direct Download ·

If you've used v1 or v2 — glance over How to migrate.

Preferences

Hide Status Bar Item

This is a native macOS feature — works the same for any app.

1. Hold ⌘ and drag the icon away from the menu bar until you see ✖️
2. Release

To bring it back — just open MiddleClick again while it's already running.

Number of Fingers

• Want to use 4, 5 or 2 fingers for middleclicking? No trouble. Even 10 is possible.
• Note: setting fingers to 2 will conflict with normal two-finger right-clicks and single-finger clicks.

defaults write art.ginzburg.MiddleClick fingers 4

Default is 3

Allow to click with more than the defined number of fingers.

• This is useful if your second hand accidentally touches the touchpad.
• Unfortunately, this does not serve as a palm rejection technique for huge touchpads.

defaults write art.ginzburg.MiddleClick allowMoreFingers true

Default is false, so that the number of fingers is precise

Tapping preferences

Max Distance Delta

• The maximum distance the cursor can travel between touch and release for a tap to be considered valid.
• The position is normalized and values go from 0 to 1.

defaults write art.ginzburg.MiddleClick maxDistanceDelta 0.03

Default is 0.05

Max Time Delta

• The maximum interval in milliseconds between touch and release for a tap to be considered valid.

defaults write art.ginzburg.MiddleClick maxTimeDelta 150

Default is 300

Troubleshooting

• Accessibility permissions not working after an update
• Antivirus / CleanMyMac false positive
• Three Finger Drag conflicts

Building from source

Assuming you have Command Line Tools installed

1. Clone the repo
2. Run make
3. You'll get a MiddleClick.app in ./build/

Credits

Created by Clément Beffa,
fixed by Alex Galonsky and Carlos E. Hernandez,
revived by Pascâl Hartmann,
maintained by Arthur Ginzburg