% uname -a FreeBSD FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE-p8 FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE-p8 GENERIC amd64 I have installed less from ports: % /usr/local/bin/less --version less 551 (PCRE regular expressions) Launching less with the "--mouse" option prevents selecting and copying text in xterm compliant terminals by the usual left-down-clicking. How to replicate: 1) Install less from ports 2) /usr/local/bin/less /var/log/messages. Select a block of text by left-down-clicking: this work 3) /usr/local/bin/less --mouse /var/log/messages Select a block of text by left-down-clicking: doesn't work. Workaround: selecting a block of text by [SHIFT] + left-down-clicking: works, but it is not expected behaviour. Same thing happens if $PAGER is set to "/usr/local/bin/less --mouse". My environment: % setenv USER=oc LOGNAME=oc HOME=/home/oc SHELL=/bin/tcsh BLOCKSIZE=K MAIL=/var/mail/oc PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/home/oc/bin TERM=xterm HOSTTYPE=FreeBSD VENDOR=amd OSTYPE=FreeBSD MACHTYPE=x86_64 SHLVL=1 PWD=/home/oc GROUP=oc HOST=FreeBSD EDITOR=vi PAGER=less LESS=-i -m +Gg Resetting $LESS to null doesn't solve the issue.
Upstream issue was reported 14th of Feb 2020. https://github.com/gwsw/less/issues/47 The workaround suggested here is to hold down shift while selecting. https://github.com/gwsw/less/issues/47#issuecomment-586270348 No comment upstream as to whether this was the intended behaviour or not, nor any pull requests to address it.