middle click on synaptics touchpad does not work with 'areas' click-method

[Jamie Strandboge]

On up to date Ubuntu 18.04, if I login to the Ubuntu gnome-shell session with 'areas' selected as the click-method (note, I seem to need to restart the session for 'click-method' to be in full effect when switching between 'fingers' and 'areas', but that is not this bug), then 'right click' works as expected (clicking touchpad in lower right), but 'middle click' does not (clicking touchpad in lower middle).

$ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad click-method
'areas'

mutter 3.28.0-2 and xserver-xorg-input-synaptics 1.9.0-1ubuntu1 are installed.

WORKAROUND: settings to 'fingers' (and logging out/back in) allows 2 and 3 finger tap to work correctly.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: mutter 3.28.0-2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-12.13-generic 4.15.7
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-12-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.8-0ubuntu10
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Mon Mar 26 09:14:45 2018
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-10-01 (540 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Release amd64 (20160719)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: mutter
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to bionic on 2018-03-19 (7 days ago)

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 18.04 (bionic) reached end-of-standard-support on May 31, 2023.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

We appreciate that this bug may be old and you might not be interested in discussing it anymore. But if you are then please upgrade to the latest Ubuntu version and re-test. If you then find the bug is still present in the newer Ubuntu version, please add a comment here telling us which new version it is in.