Enable middle mouse button emulation on Gnome login (Ubuntu)

Question

I like to use middle mouse button emulation, because my middle mouse button is a scroll wheel and it takes a lot of pressure to register a click. This gets physically painful pretty quickly.

I find it much easier to just click the left and right mouse buttons simultaneously. And I use this feature all the time.

I have a script in ~/scripts/mouse.sh that does this:

#!/bin/bash

# Enable middle button emulation
# from https://askubuntu.com/a/201825/54278
if [[ -n ${DISPLAY} ]]; then
    pointer1="MX Master"
    id1=$(xinput | awk -F= "/$pointer1.*pointer/ {print \$2}" | cut -f1)
    xinput set-prop "${id1}" "libinput Middle Emulation Enabled" 1
fi

This works well, but I have to run it manually every time I reboot.

I've created ~/.config/autostart/mouse.sh.desktop. These are the contents:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Exec=/home/david/.scripts/mouse.sh
Hidden=false
NoDisplay=false
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
Name[en_AU]=Mouse
Name=Mouse
Comment[en_AU]=Middle button emulation
Comment=Middle button emulation

My problem is that my script doesn't do anything on login.

I still have to open a terminal and run my script before middle mouse button emulation works.

I've tried removing the if [[ -n ${DISPLAY} ]]; then condition, and I've tried adding a sleep at the start of the script.

I've also tried adding the contents of my script to ~/.profile.

None of these things have worked. This has been bugging me for years!

Thanks for having a look :-)

Edits

Also tried Exec=/bin/bash /home/david/.scripts/mouse.sh. Thanks @PRATAP
Ubuntu 19.04, though it also hasn't worked in the last few versions, including 18.04
Tried deleting the .desktop file and using the Startup Applications GUI
Tried removing the if [[ -n ${DISPLAY} ]]; then condition
I had a flash of inspiration and tried using Exec=/usr/bin/xterm -e /home/david/.scripts/mouse.sh - also no luck

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 10 '19 at 23:43

The thing worked for me is the below script

/home/user/mouse.sh

#!/bin/bash

    pointer1="Logitech USB Receiver Mouse"
    id1=$(xinput | awk -F= "/$pointer1.*pointer/ {print \$2}" | cut -f1)
    xinput set-prop "${id1}" "libinput Middle Emulation Enabled" 1

some of the Output of xinput

$ xinput
⎡ Virtual core pointer                      id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad                  id=11   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Logitech USB Receiver Consumer Control    id=16   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Logitech USB Receiver Mouse               id=18   [slave  pointer  (2)]

and added the command /bin/bash /home/user/mouse.sh in Startup Applications Preferences..

Enable middle mouse button emulation on Gnome login (Ubuntu)

1 Answers1