Calming Mouse Interaction in Dired

2026-04-07T13:25:00-07:00

Conventional file managers have conditioned me to expect that a single left-button mouse click (<mouse-1>) will select a file (or directory) and double-click will open it. This is not the default behavior of Dired, where a single click is an open action. I find this far too twitchy for my taste.

This post shows how to make Dired mouse interaction align with a conventional file manager where:

Single-click on a file or directory will move the point to it, making it the implicit target for any subsequent Dired command.
Left double-click on file or directory will open it.
Selecting multiple files is emulated using Dired marking, in this case using the binding M-<mouse-1> to toggle marking a file.

The first two points above can be addressed with the global variable mouse-1-click-follows-link. Dired uses this variable to control its mouse behavior, but we don’t want to change it everywhere, just for Dired buffers. This can be implemented by setting mouse-1-click-follows-link locally as a hook to dired-mode-hook:

(add-hook
 'dired-mode-hook
 (lambda ()
   (setq-local mouse-1-click-follows-link 'double)))

To address multiple file selection, we can define a function cc/dired-mouse-toggle-mark and bind it to M-<mouse-1>.

(defun cc/dired-mouse-toggle-mark ()
  "Toggle mark of a Dired item via mouse."
  (interactive)
  (unless (use-region-p)
    (mouse-set-point last-input-event)
    (if (char-equal (char-after (line-beginning-position)) dired-marker-char)
        (call-interactively #'dired-unmark)
      (call-interactively #'dired-mark))))

(keymap-set dired-mode-map "M-<mouse-1>" #'cc/dired-mouse-toggle-mark)

Coupled with Anju support for a Dired specific context menu and many basic file manager operations can be done in Dired via mouse with minimal fuss.

Announcing Anju

2026-03-30T08:45:00-07:00

The recent post “You don’t not need the mouse” by noa ks speaks to a sentiment that I’ve had for some time. Using the mouse in Emacs can be a good, daresay delightful, experience. Unfortunately though, Emacs has antiquated default settings that presume we’re all still using a 90’s style 3-button workstation mouse. In addition, the overreliance on reusing menu keymaps for both the main and context menus results in poor user experience. I feel strongly that context menus populated this way feel more like an inventory than a thoughtful selection of commands relevant to context.

Thankfully, Emacs offers the mechanisms to sculpt mouse interactions to contemporary (circa 2026) expectations. Over the past three years, I’ve taken advantage of them to implement the following features:

Mode Line
- Right mouse click on blank space to pop-up a window management menu
- Left mouse click on buffer name to pop-up a customizable list of buffers
- Double click on blank space to toggle current window to maximize or return to prior window configuration
Context Menu
- Context-aware commands for selected text (use-region-p)
- Context-aware commands for Org and Dired mode
Main Menu
- Add Bookmarks menu
- Reorganize Help menu

Several months ago, I decided these mouse interaction changes should be generalized into a package that others could use. So began the Anju project.

Today I’m happy to announce that Anju v1.0 is now available on MELPA.

Learn more details about Anju in its User Guide.

As Anju is new, I’m always open to constructive feedback on it. Let me know what you think. Work on Anju is ongoing with the plan to keep adding improvements to it over time, in particular with supporting more context menus for different modes.

notes from /dev/null - anju

Calming Mouse Interaction in Dired

Announcing Anju