Mint 12: middle click with two-finger tap on touchpad

Question

In Linux Mint the default action when tapping the touchpad with two fingers is a right click. How can I change this to middle click?

Answer 1

If you're using an synaptics touchpad, you can use synclient to fine-tune the config.

Use following commands for middleclick on 2 fingers and right on 3 fingers:

synclient TapButton2=2
synclient TapButton3=3

The problem: you have to use these commands after each startup, so you should put them in an startup script.

I bet there is a way to configure this permanently, but I'm using it this way and it works fine for me.

Answer 2

This is managed by the synaptics input for Xorg and as such, can be configured in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Open up man synaptics to see the options for that driver.

The setting to permanently bind two finger tap as a middle-click is

Option "ClickFinger2" 3

Since 3 is commonly the number of middle mouse button.