Enable mouse for scrolling only in Vim in iTerm (MacOSX)

Question

I'd like to use the mouse in Vim only for scrolling (not to enable other Vim modes or otherwise interact with Vim). Using :set mouse=a seems to be an all or nothing operation, can this be altered? Alternatively can iTerm be made to only pass through scroll events and never click/drag events?

Long Explanation: I use Vim in iTerm a lot and don't use the mouse. However, inertia scrolling with a trackpad is really nice and a great way to peruse large files. I can :set mouse=a and use the trackpad to scroll and it's great. Now when I click however vim enters visual mode and iTerm will not copy selected text. I would like to retain iTerms ability to select and copy text.

I have thought about setting up Vim so that copying in vim will copy in Mac OS X (using pbcopy, I need to do this anyway). This will do the trick when editing local files, but most of the time I'm ssh'd somewhere and editing remote files.

Solution 1

You could use

:set mouse=nicr

It works only with mouse scroll as I've tested.

Solution 2

If you set mouse=a, you can still use Option-click to make iTerm do selection. Not ideal, but it's the best option I've found.

Solution 3

For Iterm2

Preference -> Advanced -> Mouse Tab, switch:

Scroll wheel sends arrow keys when in alternate screen mode

to:

Yes

Solution 4

I'm not sure about iTerm but this is achievable with Terminal.app.

• Scrolling in Terminal.app:

http://ayaz.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/using-mouse-inside-vim-on-terminal-app/ (install SIMBL and MouseTerm)

• Scrolling only:

  1. Go to terminal;
  2. Preference;
  3. 'Settings' Icon;
  4. 'Keyboard' Tab
  5. 'Mouse...' button;
  6. There under 'Send mouse events for:" uncheck "Left click", "Middle click", "Right click".

Done.

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Comments

[Jonah Braun]

Not quite what I need as while it will scroll in vim, iTerm won't let me select text. I've :set mouse=i so that scroll works in insert mode and iTerm select in normal mode. Close enough, so I'm marking answered. Thanks for the idea!

[Kazark]

That looks like "set the mouse to be nicer" to me.

[Kazark]

This enables things other than scrolling.

[Kazark]

Moreover, that is already mentioned in the question.

[John Whitley]

@JonahBraun, iTerm will mouse select with :set mouse=nicr if you hold down option while making the selection. See stackoverflow.com/questions/4608161/…

[Zen]

this is the real workable answer.

[Naguib Ihab]

Where do you write :set mouse=nicr?

[sshine]

You can either write that every single time you start Vim, or you could write that in the file ~/.vimrc, but consider also :set mouse=a, as @MikeMorearty suggests below. This makes selection of text possible, too. (It goes into visual mode, which some may not like.)

[sshine]

It certainly is.

[cmrust]

Enter vim > mouse wheel scrolls within vim only. Perfect, thanks!

[miguno]

In my case you must set this iTerm config AND hold down Option when scrolling with the trackpad/the mouse wheel.