[phantasmish]

As a compulsive text highlighter, I’ve always found this feature more trouble than it’s worth, by a pretty wide margin. Plus, its inability to replace text means I have to be familiar with the keyboard shortcuts anyway. I find it easier to use just the one set of commands. I’d get tripped up over “wait, did I copy that, or just highlight it?” otherwise. Better for me to have just the one habit.

I understand that some folks really like it but can’t quite grasp why. Though I believe them when they say it’s useful for them.

[manbart]

Convenience. You can copy/paste without touching the keyboard at all

[bilkow]

You don't need primary selection to avoid the keyboard, you can also hold right-click on your selection and release it on "copy" (or right-click on your selection then left-click on copy, more intuitive but slightly more cumbersome)

I agree it's less convenient (there's an extra step: explicitly copying the text), but in my experience it's also more reliable as you don't lose it by just selecting anything.

[jenadine]

I'm both a compulsive text highlighter, and a middle click paster. This is not mutually exclusive. It's not because I highlighted something that I will paste it, I usually know when I'm going to paste something.

What I don't like is website that only have a button to copy something because it ends up in the wrong clipboard and that's confusing.

[ikidd]

It's the thing you do most with selected text and it removes the need to use a keyboard shortcut.

Selecting text with no purpose and being worried that it's a security hole is like saying "I leave my car on the street with the keys in it therefore nobody should have keys".

[bilkow]

I'd argue it's more like "looking at your keys while you're picking them". Selecting text is also known as highlighting and some people highlight text while reading / thinking.

[fn-mote]

I totally disagree.

Or is a huge surprise (to the typical user) that highlighting text BY ITSELF in one window exposes that information for JavaScript running in a different application (like the browser). It’s like knowing that my smart TV is fingerprinting my viewing habits.

Isn’t the biggest security risk from copy and pasting passwords from a “secure” location to another one?

It looks like with modern browsers, reading the clipboard is gated behind some restrictions. Whew.

[oldandboring]

> I’d get tripped up over “wait, did I copy that, or just highlight it?”

I think I'm in this boat too. I use this feature, I'm accustomed to it, but throughout my day I am constantly forgetting whether something is in my selection buffer or my clipboard. Windows and Mac users just don't have this problem.

[thrance]

I'm also a compulsive text highlighter, and I find middle click pasting annoying too. There are dozens of us, dozens!