Middle click on what? And which desktop environment?
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
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On windows when you middle click an application it’ll open it in a new window, this sometimes would let you open multiple windows of an application that typically isn’t an option elsewhere.
Hypothetically I have Firefox open, if I middle click on the Firefox .desktop file again it would open a second Firefox in a new window.
Mint, cinnamon, stock.
Right-click on the applet (where you want to middle-click), select 'Applet preferences' -> 'Configure'. Change the 'Middle click action'.
I don't think there is an option for open new window here - i thought id found this solution too :(
Edit - I think they must have added this recently!! open new instance is available! solved :) thanks!
it's been there for at least the last two years that I've used it
What are you talking about? Middle click on links opens them in new tabs, middle click on tabs closes them, always has been, and works on both windows and Linux, both chrome and Firefox.
sorry, I mean middle click on the application (in the taskbar) to open a new window. Windows does this automatically.
Windows does this automatically
....what? TIL after all my life using Windows.
I also had no idea !
I'm more of a "close window"-man myself.
GNOME does this by default, so if it's not working for your SO, they probably have installed some extension that modifies that behavior. I've never used Mint, but I think it's pretty heavily modified from base GNOME, so maybe it has that feature disabled with whatever their suite of modifications does. I'd poke around in the panel settings if those are exposed to you in Mint.
Mint's desktop environment, Cinnamon, is technically based on GNOME Shell (i.e. a fork of it), but we're not just talking "pretty heavily modified". In many ways, it's its own thing now and you can't really assume things to work similarly.
KDE also does this