How can I get mouse selection to work in emacs and iTerm2 on Mac?

Question

after turning on xterm-mouse-mode, any click on the in the screen returns "mouse-1 is undefined". What should I be defining "mouse-1" as? Is there some reason my mouse clicks are returning this event, and not others its suspecting?

Nicholas Riley · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-01 16:54:04Z

55

For Emacs in iTerm 2, I've found that the following bit in my ~/.emacs file works very well, providing the ability to insert the character at an arbitrary location, mark a region, and use the scroll wheel:

;; Enable mouse support
(unless window-system
  (require 'mouse)
  (xterm-mouse-mode t)
  (global-set-key [mouse-4] (lambda ()
                              (interactive)
                              (scroll-down 1)))
  (global-set-key [mouse-5] (lambda ()
                              (interactive)
                              (scroll-up 1)))
  (defun track-mouse (e))
  (setq mouse-sel-mode t)
)

edited Aug 1, 2015 at 16:54

Nicholas Riley

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answered Jan 14, 2012 at 0:29

bfroehle

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3 Comments

Stefan Over a year ago

Don't quote your lambdas: it's at best useless.

ishmael Over a year ago

Note that this solution means selected text (via left click) gets copied to the Emacs clipboard. To use the System clipboard instead, you need to use Option-Select (Mac) or Shift-Select (Linux).

Joe C Over a year ago

This works for only terminal but not iterm2. In term2, i have to remove "unless window-system".

DrStrngeluv · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-24 20:54:10Z

35

I put this in my .emacs:

(require 'mouse)
(xterm-mouse-mode t)
(defun track-mouse (e)) 
(setq mouse-sel-mode t)

and that seems to do the trick, and now a mouse click in a split changes focus to the split.

Note: I am using iterm2, and I found the info here: http://groups.google.com/group/iterm2-discuss/browse_thread/thread/8e1f2ee7db26c07d/17ac15e69c554998?show_docid=17ac15e69c554998&pli=1

answered Jul 24, 2011 at 20:54

DrStrngeluv

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2 Comments

mr-sk Over a year ago

This did not work for me on OSX + iterm2. It gave me the error of unknown mouse-4 and mouse-5 when scrolling. The answer below, by bfroehle, did work.

TextGeek Over a year ago

Also didn't work for me -- when I click ANSI terminal escape sequences get inserted.

Stefan · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-16 12:46:16Z

7

Mac OS X's Terminal.app does not support mouse reporting. However MouseTerm is a SIMBL plugin that provides it with this feature. http://bitheap.org/mouseterm/

Install MouseTerm and put the following in your Emacs config file:

; enable mouse reporting for terminal emulators
(unless window-system
  (xterm-mouse-mode 1)
  (global-set-key [mouse-4] (lambda ()
                              (interactive)
                              (scroll-down 1)))
  (global-set-key [mouse-5] (lambda ()
                              (interactive)
                              (scroll-up 1))))

edited Sep 16, 2013 at 12:46

Stefan

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answered Jun 23, 2011 at 8:16

hekevintran

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2 Comments

Asher Over a year ago

Is this really required?

markshep Over a year ago

In El Capitan that elisp just works without requiring you to install MouseTerm (or SIMBL) first.

George · Accepted Answer · 2011-04-19 17:21:07Z

1

I suspect that installing the emacs-goodies-el will provide the appropriate bindings.

answered Apr 19, 2011 at 17:21

George

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2 Comments

Chris Over a year ago

seems like this is an ubuntu/debian package, how can I add this? I believe this is an mac configuration issue because even after issuing a (require 'mouse) a number of the function defined in mouse.el and not available in emacs. Tried the emacs version available by default and from ports/homebrew...

ocodo Over a year ago

(require 'mouse) is available in the base package.

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