How to configure Terminal to be "Putty-like" when it comes to copy-paste with mouse?

Solution 1:

Terminal is limited in its configurability but iTerm2 is a Terminal replacement that does what you ask and more. Including bookmarks for ssh sessions not unlike puTTY.

Solution 2:

If you have a three-button mouse (e.g., the Apple Mighty Mouse scroll ball can act as a third button), Terminal will paste the current selection if you Middle-Click (just like X11 and xterm). It is the same as invoking the Edit > Paste Selection command, which has the keyboard shortcut Shift-Command-V.

As of OS X 10.8, selecting text in a terminal copies the text to a pasteboard and Paste Selection pastes the contents of this pasteboard (akin to X11’s PRIMARY). It now behaves very much like xterm under X11. As a result, Paste Selection and Middle-Click are now available when there is no selection, pasting the same text until something else is selected, and the text persists when quitting/reopening Terminal. The pasteboard has the identifier com.apple.Terminal.selection and is available to other programs.

Also, you can drag-and-drop selected text to Paste it. You can of course drag to other terminal windows (or other applications), but you can also just drag a few pixels and then release to Paste into the current terminal.

Solution 3:

NO need to download anything. In Terminal do

  1. select text to copy
  2. to paste, click the middle button of the mouse, or (cmd + shift + v)

I just tried in Yosemite.

Also works in High Sierra.