MacOS – How to use the TrackPad’s force touch as copy paste function in terminal

copy/pastemacosterminaltrackpad

Since MacBook Pro 2015, Apple introduced the "Force Touch" in the Track Pad. When you click it in the Terminal, by default it gives you dictionary/Wikipedia search results.

I would like to change it to a "middle button"-like function as in Ubuntu: copy the selected text into the prompt, without passing via the clipboard and without the need to use the annoying C V sequence. Any ideas?

edit: shift V does the part of copying without passing via the clipboard. now I need to have force touch doing this.

Best Answer

Check out BetterTouchTool. This application will let you customize actions based on trackpad gestures (including Force Touch).

Here is the action I have defined:

3 Finger FORCE Click -> Middle Click

With this setting, I can select text in an application (this works well in Terminal and iTerm), and without explicitly copy/pasting, paste with a 3-finger force-click.