That is a far, far cry from using kinetic scrolling. In fact, using a mouse wheel is a very far experience away from that. I basically cannot use "normal" mouses with scroll wheel anymore for that reason, I couldn't get anything done like that.
I think there are/used to be some mice with a ultra-low-fricton "freerunning" scroll wheel. I guess that could be a similar experience, but of course tmux would stand in the way of that as well.
And I'm very old school and had been using text-only terminal starting in the 1980s...
Logitech MX3 is the modern version, not sure what else there is. It's got a magnetic mechanism that allows the scroll wheel to freewheel if you want.
I have been wrestling with having to enter scroll mode for so long now. It's so infuriating. It works without configurations on iTerm, but does not work on a single other terminal emulator I've tried.
I just tried your config setting in Ghostty and still, when I use my mouse it scrolls through zsh history, not the screen
Yeah, copying can be weird. I full screen a panel to copy multiple lines of text using the terminal emulator’s copy, not tmux’s. Works well enough.