Enable the use of the mouse. Works for most terminals (xterm, Win32 win32-mouse, QNX pterm, *BSD console with sysmouse and Linux console with gpm). For using the mouse in the GUI, see gui-mouse. The mouse can be enabled for different modes: n Normal mode and Terminal modes v Visual mode i Insert mode c Command-line mode h all previous modes when editing a help file a all previous modes r for hit-enter and more-prompt prompt Normally you would enable the mouse in all five modes with:

:set mouse=a

If your terminal can't overrule the mouse events going to the application, use:

:set mouse=nvi

Then you can press ":", select text for the system, and press Esc to go back to Vim using the mouse events. In defaults.vim "nvi" is used if the 'term' option is not matching "xterm".

When the mouse is not enabled, the GUI will still use the mouse for modeless selection. This doesn't move the text cursor.

See mouse-using. Also see 'clipboard'.

Note: When enabling the mouse in a terminal, copy/paste will use the "* register if there is access to an X-server. The xterm handling of the mouse buttons can still be used by keeping the shift key pressed. Also see the 'clipboard' option.

(default "", "a" for GUI and Win32, set to "a" or "nvi" in defaults.vim)