Is there a keyboard shortcut in Firefox to paste the Unix “primary selection” clipboard, not the Firefox one?

Question

I run Linux, and am used to selecting text with the mouse to copy and pressing shift-Ins to paste. (This uses an alternate clipboard known as the "Primary Selection".)

This seems to work in every app besides Firefox. Firefox uses a different clipboard, where Ctrl-C copies and Ctrl-V pastes. Is there a keystroke or configuration change I can do to make Firefox paste from the Unix "primary selection" clipboard -- the one it pastes from when I click the middle mouse button?

Edit: I'm looking for a keyboard shortcut. Not mouse.

Answer 1

X11 has multiple clipboards: Selecting text with the mouse fills the "Primary Selection" and clicking the middle button inserts it. For Ctrl-V/Ctrl-C most programs use the "Clipboard", Shift-Ins seems to sometimes use the Primary Selection, sometimes the Clipboard.

So it's easier to not use Shift-Ins but either the Mouse or Ctrl-V/Ctrl-C to copy text between different applications.

Answer 2

In Linux, clicking the middle button (or scroll wheel) on the mouse should paste the contents of the Unix clipboard.

If you don't have a middle button on your mouse, clicking both the left and right buttons at the same time is often set up to emulate a middle-click.

Answer 3

You can bind the following command to a key, it should make your firefox selection available to other programs:

xsel -b|xsel

and vice versa

xsel|xsel -b