How to disable Touchpad?

Question

I want my touchpad to be disabled when I use my mouse. How can I do that? Touchpad-indicator has stopped working on 11.10. It used to work on 11.04. Gnome3 is not a solution as I don't like it and find it buggy.

Answer 1

Run the following command in a terminal:

xinput list

You will get an output that looks like this:

⎡ Virtual core pointer                      id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad                id=12   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                     id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard               id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                 id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Sleep Button                              id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Laptop_Integrated_Webcam_1.3M             id=10   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard              id=11   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Dell WMI hotkeys                          id=13   [slave  keyboard (3)]

It displays all the input devices connected. Note that they all have an id. Since 12 is the id for my touchpad, running the following command will disable it.

xinput set-prop 12 "Device Enabled" 0

Answer 2

check this link out: How to disable-enable touchpad in ubuntu 11.10

The answer found there is really neat:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/atareao
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install touchpad-indicator

After this you will get a switch in your notification area.

The only thing I would wish is to be able to set the switch key to Fn-F8 (which is a touchpad key switch on my keyboard...

Answer 3

I tried using the laptop function key (fn) to disable the pointer and it works. It did not work during my 11.04 days though, so give that a try.

Answer 4

First check if your laptop has enable/disable touchpad keyboard shortcut, by any chance! On my Lenovo Thinkpad T500 it's Fn+F8

Answer 5

I have a Medion Akoya notebook model P7812 using Ubuntu 11.10 (64 bit) and the Fn & F6 key combination disables the touchpad. Allen Australia

Answer 6

https://bitbucket.org/barseghyanartur/xinput_shortcuts

It's a very tiny code which allows you to disable/enable the touchpad from terminal.

Simply follow the Instructions below: 1) Download https://bitbucket.org/barseghyanartur/xinput_shortcuts/get/cae698b61e4c.zip 2) Unpack it somewhere. 3) Open terminal and go to the directory where you have unpacked it. 4) chmod +x install.sh 5) ./install.sh

Now you can disable/enable touchpad by typing "disable_touchpad" or "enable_touchpad" commands in your terminal.

Answer 7

This worked for me in 11.10 :

⎡ Virtual core pointer                      id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad                id=12   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                     id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard               id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                 id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Sleep Button                              id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Laptop_Integrated_Webcam_1.3M             id=10   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard              id=11   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Dell WMI hotkeys                          id=13   [slave  keyboard (3)]

It displays all the input devices connected. Note that they all have an id. Since 12 is the id for my touchpad, running the following command will disable it.

xinput set-prop 12 "Device Enabled" 0

and I would put it in .bashrc or whatever except that I'm not sure that device 12 (actually 11 for me) is always the touchpad.

Now if I could just get the up-arrow in nautilius to work and see the .dirs

Answer 8

install the Jupiter app. You can disable the touchpad with it and is remembered. This has worked effectively for me on both a Lenovo IdeaPad and ThinkPad on 11.04, 11.10, and 12.04.

Answer 9

fn+f8 work like a charm on 12.10

Answer 10

Based on answer given by @Peng Wu I created a bash script that can be used...

#!/bin/bash

declare -i ID
ID=`xinput list | grep -Eo 'TouchPad\s*id\=[0-9]{1,2}' | grep -Eo '[0-9]{1,2}'`

xinput set-prop $ID "Device Enabled" 0

echo Touchpad has been disabled.

You can manually run it or run it on start. Then you can make the script run at boot.

Another bash script to toggle touchpad:

#!/bin/bash

declare -i ID
ID=`xinput list | grep -Eo 'TouchPad\s*id\=[0-9]{1,2}' | grep -Eo '[0-9]{1,2}'`
declare -i STATE
STATE=`xinput list-props $ID|grep 'Device Enabled'|awk '{print $4}'`
if [ $STATE -eq 1 ]
then
    xinput disable $ID
echo "Touchpad disabled."
else
    xinput enable $ID
    echo "Touchpad enabled."
fi

Answer 11

Define keyboard shortcuts

^{(this answer was copied from an invalid edit)}

Instead of remembering that command every time you wish to enable/disable the touchpad, you can instead add it as a keyboard combination shortcut.

Under preferences in Keyboard Shortcuts click add. Give a name to the shortcut like "Disable Touchpad" or something and add the command you discovered above

xinput set-prop <id> "Device Enabled" 0

and click apply. Then add another shortcut called "Enable Touchpad" or something similar to the first and change the previous command to a 1 at the end

xinput set-prop <id> "Device Enabled" 1

those are the off/on respectivly.

Now that those are added, click on Enable Touchpad's Shortcut column (should say 'disabled') and type the keyboard shortcut you want it to be, I chose Win+1 (Hold Windows Key and press the number 1). Do the same for Disable Touchpad, I chose Win+2.

Now Win+1 enables my touchpad and Win+2 disables it.