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How do you disable the scrolll wheel click from going back to a previous site?

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  • 7 have this problem
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  • Last reply by nichii

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This has been bugging me for a while now. I click on links using my scroll wheel to open them up in a new tab. If I accidentally click outside of the link, Firefox will take me back to the website that I last visited. Here's an example. I go to google and then go to youtube. If I click anywhere on the page that isn't a link using the scroll wheel, it takes me back to google. I've checked the about:config mousewheel settings and to my understanding, the "2" value is what makes the mousewheel do this. However, none of the options in my about:config have the "2" value. I don't believe it's a driver issue because I use Linux and am provided with the default drivers. Does anyone know how to fix this? I'd greatly appreciate any help I can get.

This has been bugging me for a while now. I click on links using my scroll wheel to open them up in a new tab. If I accidentally click outside of the link, Firefox will take me back to the website that I last visited. Here's an example. I go to google and then go to youtube. If I click anywhere on the page that isn't a link using the scroll wheel, it takes me back to google. I've checked the about:config mousewheel settings and to my understanding, the "2" value is what makes the mousewheel do this. However, none of the options in my about:config have the "2" value. I don't believe it's a driver issue because I use Linux and am provided with the default drivers. Does anyone know how to fix this? I'd greatly appreciate any help I can get.

Chosen solution

Thank you. Unfortunately, changing those settings didn't help, but I believe I found the solution. In the about:config page there's an option named middlemouse.contentLoadURL. If you set that to false, it seems to stop the middle mouse click from going back to the previous visited website.

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You can modify mousewheel.with prefs on the about:config page to disable actions for specific modifiers.

0 means "Do nothing"
1 means "Scroll contents"
2 means "Go back or forward in the history"
3 means "Zoom in or out the contents"
mousewheel.default.action
mousewheel.with_alt.action
mousewheel.with_control.action
mousewheel.with_meta.action
mousewheel.with_shift.action

You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar. You can accept the warning and click "I'll be careful" to continue.

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Chosen Solution

Thank you. Unfortunately, changing those settings didn't help, but I believe I found the solution. In the about:config page there's an option named middlemouse.contentLoadURL. If you set that to false, it seems to stop the middle mouse click from going back to the previous visited website.