Middle mouse button scrolling

[harold-b]

• VSCode Version: 1.10

I searched the issues but did not find any such post, so apologies if there is an existing thread that I missed.

I'd like to know if there is any middle mouse click scrolling, planned? That is, clicking the scroll wheel to toggle drag scrolling. It's a useful feature to have when navigating very long files.

And if it isn't, is there any API that would allow this to be enabled via an extension?

Thanks

[Tyriar]

@harold-b This is an OS-level Windows feature, it should work on Windows now. Also middle click has special behavior on Linux by acting as a secondary clipboard so it definitely wouldn't work there.

[harold-b]

it should work on Windows now

Which version is it available on? I can't seem to trigger it on 1.10 public or insiders.

[Tyriar]

@harold-b do you have the same issues in Chrome and/or Atom? I wouldn't expect us to need to do anything on our side for it to work.

[harold-b]

I'm on Chrome right now and it's always worked. I've never used atom (other than electron via VSCode), but I'll grab it and verify.

[harold-b]

I tried Atom, it didn't work either. I checked the settings page to see if there was an option I needed to enable, I didn't find anything, but scrolling worked on the settings page. So I decided to check a markdown file in preview mode on VS Code, and it worked there too. However, not in text documents on either app.

[Tyriar]

@harold-b k, I'll relabel and assign, thanks for bearing with me :smiley:

[harold-b]

Not at all, my pleasure to help. Thanks for your attention :+1:

[csicky]

Hi, any news on this?

THX

[jeepshop]

Bump!

I use this feature constantly within Visual Studio, and it is greatly missed.

[csicky]

I keep seeing that you guys are working on something each month when there is a new version. How come you keep forgetting about this one? There has been a year already. If you say it is something OS level it means it's a bug. It doesn't matter, bug, feature, just please make it work.

[Tyriar]

@csicky there are 4000 open issues currently and there are ~2000 new ones created every month. Everything needs to be prioritized.

[csicky]

I understand that, but if there are 2000 new ones every month it means that in a year there were many issues prioritized before this one.

[alexdima]

@csicky The advantage of us being Open Source is that if you'd like to have something implemented, you can do it and submit a PR. Issues and discussions are very valuable, but IMHO a PR will have a far greater impact! :heart:

[csicky]

@alexandrudima OK then, until I will find time to make it myself I will have to live with it every day. OS is not always an advantage. But if you say it's an advantage, why are you doing it actually? Not to share it with the users? Here is a request from some users.

[Tyriar]

@csicky I don't understand the point you're trying to make here? There are many good and bad things with OSS, but from this conversation I've gathered:

Advantages:

• Ability to talk directly with developers
• Access to source code
• Ability to contribute
• More unfiltered feedback from users

Disadvantages:

• ?

The fact that VS Code is OSS doesn't change the fact that we're busy and need to manage and prioritize the vast amount of incoming issues. You would probably be worse off if VS Code was closed as you wouldn't have the ability to contribute is what @alexandrudima was trying to say.

[csicky]

Well, if I would be a paying customer you would say that "Thank you for your feedback and we'll consider it". Instead because open source you say "If you want it that bad, go ahead and make it yourself." But this can feel good or bad depending on person. What my problem with this is that I can be sure it will never be implemented / fixed. And since this functionality comes from the operating system, the fact that it was lost is actually a bug. If we look at the numbers, people asked for this more than a year ago. There are also questions about this on other places on internet. In a year you received another 24000 issues all much more important than this one. Now you say that you need to prioritize but if that is the case there is a problem with how things are prioritized maybe. Couldn't this be on spot 23999 in this year and get some attention?

There is no point in arguing, I just waste time I can't afford. Maybe I sound a bit grumpy, sorry for that.

[ccu-michaelhatch]

Alright everyone, maybe I'll work on a PR for this today - depending on how similar VS Code is to Visual Studio, I may be able to use the Middle Click Scroll plugin as an example.

[Tyriar]

@ccu-michaelhatch the fix for this is likely pretty different from the VS one. I imagine a middle click event is being stopped when it should propagate up to some scrollable area.

[ccu-michaelhatch]

Well either way I'm hoping I have time today/during the rest of the week to get it working - but that's a petty good lead so thanks for that. :)

[csicky]

I noticed that middle click scrolling is working on the release notes tab which opens after an update.

[joshpeng]

Any luck on this lately @ccu-michaelhatch?

[ccu-michaelhatch]

Nope, sorry - I should have updated the group. I had sunk too much time into it without making significant progress and found a workaround that suited my needs--although I'm sure it's frustrating for everyone reading this, since that's likely what everyone else has had happen that has looked into this.

[phillijw]

Can anyone explain why it doesn't currently work in most files? Is it a bug or by design? If anyone has any info on the issue, please put it here as it may help someone else fix the issue.

[csicky]

Since it comes from the operating system (or mouse driver?) and it should work by default, it must be a bug. I don't think somebody deliberately just blocked a useful mouse gesture/event. What is the difference between the editor and the release notes page? In release notes page middle click scrolling is working and I doubt that anyone programmed it to do. What happens is that developers working on VS Code don't use it and didn't catch it not working as they never tried. I am just speculating here :)

[ccu-michaelhatch]

When I looked into it, I found that the middle mouse button and the left mouse button were being grouped together for the file list, and I was trying to find something similar for the editor panel.

[csicky]

I see label "feature-request" to this issue but it is actually a bug, not a feature request. I just scrolled up using middle click to read the label correctly.

Anyway, I found a solution because it was very frustrating. Using X-Mouse driver I could intercept middle-click and this program has its own middle click scroll which we can use.

https://www.highrez.co.uk/downloads/XMouseButtonControl.htm

No point in waiting another 2(two) years for this to be fixed.

[stefan505]

Badly missing this feature in VS Code, been using it for years in VS. Any plans to get this "working" or "implemented"?

[Mikhail22]

Such features should be done on OS-level.
For Windows users: there is "Autohotkey" app, it can solve all your troubles (not only with scrolling).

Here is my version of mouse scroll in AHK (mousepan-v02.ahk): https://github.com/Mikhail22/Autohotkey---Mouse-scroll

It uses the right button, but this can be changed (see descriptions). Works everywhere of course.

[stefan505]

@Mikhail22 I struggle to understand why this must be done on OS-level? The middle wheel click and scroll works fine on the Release Notes page as well as plugin Details, Changelog pages from what I can see (might be more places as well).

[Mikhail22]

@stefan505 because scrolling itself is kind of universal feature. I need to scroll everywhere - browsers, editors. Of course one can implement own scrolling, but since VSCode is a windowed app, it should just recieve scrolldown/up events. (AHK uses OS APIs).
Just like in Firefox - I use my AHK script and Firefox scrolls smoothly. In this case I suggest VSCode should receive the scroll events and implement smooth scrolling. (currently it is smooth only when using own scrolling, and yes it is not working in main editor)

By the way, how the mid-button works now - is suboptimal IMO. Compare to my scrolling method, I find it much better.

[Paril]

The new update uses middle mouse for box selection now, which while a nice feature I think the scrolling really needs to come back. I use this so much in Visual Studio!

[stefan505]

I just discovered in Windows 10 that holding Shift + scrolling the mouse wheel up and down scrolls the text editor horizontally. Tested in 1.23.0 stable release.

Wheel up scrolls left and wheel down scrolls right. Still not quite what is wanted, but close to it.

[andrewrindf]

Great find @stefan505 ! This is very helpful in the meantime.

[SetTrend]

It is a common Windows document based application feature that a document's content is being scrolled when the mouse is moved while the middle mouse button is held down.

This issue is open for two years. Shouldn't this feature work by now?

I propose to add a corresponding Settings/Preferences option, allowing the user to decide what happens when the mouse is moved while the middle mouse button is pressed.

(PS: Same behaviour for SQL Operations Studio, which seems to share the same code base VS Code does.)

[lonix1]

It's 2018 now. I don't have any app that doesn't have this feature (except vscode).

[kenkit]

No mouse button scroll, I mean where you click on small arrow at the bottom/top of scroll bar. It's annoying on touchpad without this.

[ghost]

Guys.

Pls.

[evanricard]

Would love to have middle mouse scroll please

[eao]

pls

[TimeTerminal]

If issues are tackled by priority, then I'm posting here to share my support for this. Windows and Mac. 🙏

pls

[NicTanghe]

Can people who have tried fixing this post their actions in this comment section plz ? Thx

[Glandos]

@harold-b This is an OS-level Windows feature, it should work on Windows now. Also middle click has special behavior on Linux by acting as a secondary clipboard so it definitely wouldn't work there.

@Tyriar It seems that there is a way to avoid middle-click default action. See the behavior of ScrollAnywhere It's also available for Chrome, so I guess it could be integrated. It's very effective when scrolling, giving the fact that since the editor knows the document length, it can scroll at the same speed as if the left button was drag'n'dropping the scrollbar.

[kevinchar93]

I see label "feature-request" to this issue but it is actually a bug, not a feature request. I just scrolled up using middle click to read the label correctly.

Anyway, I found a solution because it was very frustrating. Using X-Mouse driver I could intercept middle-click and this program has its own middle click scroll which we can use.

https://www.highrez.co.uk/downloads/XMouseButtonControl.htm

No point in waiting another 2(two) years for this to be fixed.

Came here to bump this method, works for me!

[f7urry]

I see label "feature-request" to this issue but it is actually a bug, not a feature request. I just scrolled up using middle click to read the label correctly.

Anyway, I found a solution because it was very frustrating. Using X-Mouse driver I could intercept middle-click and this program has its own middle click scroll which we can use.

https://www.highrez.co.uk/downloads/XMouseButtonControl.htm

No point in waiting another 2(two) years for this to be fixed.

with this method works, but the problem cant close tab using middle click

[csicky]

@f7urry I tried, and it does close the tab. However, I don't use that, I have a custom button on my mouse set up for Ctrl+W and I use that to close tabs.

WOW, this is already 4 years old issue. Just because in the beginning somebody in VS Code team made a mistake and hijacked this mouse event. And is marked as "feature request".

About prioritization, this issue has less priority than ~75000 issues which came after it. So, if we can just all do a plus 1, thumbs up, 75000 times in this comment list, it will be fixed.

[tomnar]

1/3 of the mouse buttons are not working properly, how can this be anything else than high priority?

[evelant]

Agreed this is a highly frustrating issue. VSCode should not overwrite default OS behavior without an option to re-enable it!

[kevink369]

The Horizontal Scroll wheel also does nothing within VSCode. I assume that these two behaviors are linked. I tend to load up full VS instead of VSCode because a few of these daily operations tasks aren't supported gracefully. I want to like VSCode more.

[NicTanghe]

ok so i recently switchted to linux again annyone know how firefox coded what they call autoscoll ? it allows you to scroll with middlemouse. if firefox can implement it i'm 100% sure it can be done here 2.

[csicky]

Keep it up people!!! Only 74996 comments left until we reach priority :D