How can I make a shortcut key to disable the mouse pad?

Question

I have a dm3t laptop and when im using the keyboard I frequently accidentally touch it and cause some mouse event. How can I make a shortcut key that toggles the mousepad on and off?

Answer 1

If you are using Synaptics Touchpad, you can toggle the touchpad on and off by using synclient. To turn the pad off, run synclient TouchpadOff=1, and to turn it back on use synclient TouchpadOff=0.

You can set up keyboard shortcuts by System > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts.

If you're not sure if you are using Synaptics Touchpad, run xinput list, and one of the entries will mention Synaptics if you are.

Answer 2

You could use Touchfreeze

By using the following command you can install it from terminal

sudo apt-get install touchfreeze

This application automatically disables touchpad temporarily when you type something and also enables it back after you stopped typing. It has a GUI and some configuration options like a customizable switch-delay.

So you'll need no shortcut-key.