Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Make Shift + RMB work on any item slot in any GUI to copy it's recipe.

What?

Currently, you can Shift + RMB on a machine to copy the recipe it's currently using, which can be used to paste onto other machines using Shift + LMB. It would be great if this 'copy recipe' functionality was extended to any item buttons/slots in any gui. (Inventory, crafting, factoriopedia, assembler ingredient slots, etc.)
By item slots i mean anywhere that you can use 'Q' to pipette items.

Why?

This would make the UX nicer for copying the recipe for the ingredients for one machine onto another. Consider the example of making fast inserters. With this feature, you would simply be able to Shift + RMB on the inserter ingredient slot of the machine making fast inserters, to easily paste the recipe onto another assembler.

This is only one example. I often find that I always have easier access to pipette the item i want to make (Very often I even already have the item pipetted) than having to manually go into the machine's GUI to set the recipe. The tab in the machine may be set to another tab, so I have to switch tabs and then look for the item again in the new menu, which feels very clunky.

No.
1/ Copy settings (Shift + LMB) is currently tightly related to copying settings between eneitites.
2/ Some items have ambiguous recipes (some items can be crafted by multiple recipes [LDS], some items are produced by a common recipe [scrap recycling])

Because of that i am against this suggestion because it would add a "sometimes works" feature. Given how much of "sometimes works" blueprint parametrisation already is and how many bug reports this causes, i would prefer to not have "sometimes works" features added.