Restore middle-click functionality to TrackPoint with Thinkpad running Windows 8

UPDATE: Please see this more recent post for more up-to-date information about this issue.

One major annoyance with the Windows 8 “upgrade” on this Thinkpad was the reduced functionality of the TrackPoint driver which actually removed the usual three choices for the middle button: scrolling, magnifying, or neither. Scrolling has always been the default but the problem is that that feature then overrides the middle-click action of the middle button. However, middle-click is useful in many circumstances with many apps. For example one can close a tab in Firefox by middle-clicking on it. One can also middle-click on a link and have it open in a new tab, which is vastly more efficient than having to right-click and select “Open in new tab” or than having to press a modifier key and then clicking.

Therefore one of the first things I’ve always done on a new Thinkpad is to go into the settings for the TrackPoint (under Control Panel -> Mouse) and set the middle button to “neither”. That leaves it alone and means that pressing it will be a normal middle-click. Having that option missing from Windows 8 has been a major annoyance.

The solution I found is to install the Synaptics driver from Synaptics’ web site synaptics.com. Doing so will once again provide the middle button options which having been missing from the Thinkpad versions of the Windows 8 driver.