Hi. I might be wrong, but I think the middle click used to open a file with the program last chosen in “Choose Application” context menu (without the “Always open… “ flag). Anyway, now it is a wildcard. I think it would be great to be able to choose a default program for a file type to be opened with a middle click.
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You can do this, by changing the order of application in the choose list from systemsettings file type association: the application used for middle click is the second from the list (after the default application).
I implemented this, so it is somewhat simply configurable.
Especially for the view/edit, usecase where you have a file-editor and a file-viewer that aren’t the same application.
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You did it? That’s a very useful feature, thank you. 
Could you extent this with Ctrl+middle click (or any other modifier) for a third one? My use case are images: view/light edit/heavy edit (using light or heavy application for these edits).
this feature (plasma 6 i assume) doesn’t interfere with middle click to paste in a text window, does it?
I don’t understand the question, do you often want to paste text onto a file icon in dolphin ?
Regardless, that would be very unexpected, “workspace” shortcut like middle-click paste are handled after application have a chance to deal with the input.
Dolphin is not part of plasma but this was released as part of the Plasma 6.0 release On middle-click, open file with the second application for the file mime (!596) · Merge requests · System / Dolphin · GitLab in KDE Gears 24.02.0. If you want to know the whole story (that anyone can google).
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That’s doable, not hard to had. Inf fact, I had thought about it:
But it is always best to start small.
Feel free to open a feature request, and suggest which modifier to use. bugs.kde.org
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Done.
Thank you for your reply. The list in systemsettings isn’t editable on its own (at least in GUI), I had to set the application for the middle click as default and then reset the main application.
In any case, it is kinda hard to see the connection between dolphin and systemsettings, as dolphin is just a file manager that could be omitted or used interchangeably with other fms.
UPD. Don’t get me wrong. It is good that dolphin uses systemsettings list to order the applications by default. But, it would be better if dolphin had its own editable list.
Yep. That’s it. Thank you. My bad I’ve never looked in there.
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Nobody knows everything, that’s why forums exist. 
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Won’t do, sorry. This is very hard to document to users. The file association is a session setting, that works across DE.
The best we can do is add a link to systemsettings kcm_association or keditfiletype image/jpeg, which dolphin already has indirectly as pointed by Allow to set default program for the middle-click. - #9 by Marata
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That would be a perfect junior Job for a new contributor.
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