12

To disable the touchpad on an HP Pavilion dv6, you double tap on an area in the upper left hand corner of the touchpad. Then the blue indicator light around the border of the touchpad turns red, and the touchpad is disabled.

Double tapping on this area again turns the touchpad turns back on. I do a lot of typing, and frequently bump the touchpad, messing up my work and annoying me. So, I would like to enable the ability to disable the touchpad by double-tapping on the area in the upper left hand corner. Unfortunately, there is no function key backup to disable the touchpad.

This does not work in Ubuntu. I can turn it off using touchpad-indicator, but the program must be manually started and you have to disable using the key combination. Double-tapping the area is much easier. My computer is the HP Pavilion dv6-6135dx. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

2
  • please consider unchecking that answer as definitive and maybe edit the question - update it for the new kernel/ubuntu. if not, delete it maybe?
    – user47206
    Nov 9, 2014 at 21:27
  • @William, For my HP on Windows it doesn't work too. Some HP laptops just don't have this feature. Are you sure for your laptop it's working on Windows and that this is a ubuntu issue?
    – Pacerier
    Nov 6, 2015 at 4:36

4 Answers 4

5

The option you mentoined is a driver feature - there is no linux alternative for that until someone do patch for it.

Look around touchpad settings and you'll find useful replacement settings. For example you can set up a keyboard shourtcut to turn on/off touchpad.

4
  • 1
    Well, can I submit this somewhere to have a driver created for it?
    – William
    Dec 8, 2011 at 13:53
  • 1
    Yes, you can make a blueprint on launchpad at a relevant project. For example try this: launchpad.net/touchpad-indicator
    – hzsolt
    Dec 8, 2011 at 17:04
  • I already use touchpad-indicator, but I want this to work with the driver.
    – William
    Dec 9, 2011 at 13:42
  • 1
    any update on this?
    – user47206
    Oct 18, 2014 at 13:19
4
+50
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.touchpad disable-while-typing true 

will disable your touchpad while you are typing and re-enable it when it feels that you are using your finger on the touchpad.

Not sure if it will fit your needs but its a solution that fits me perfectly on my laptop.

To revert to the default parameter use

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.touchpad disable-while-typing false

If it doesn't help drop a comment, well figure out something about your touchpad.

2
  • 1
    I've already done so, but he feature is unreliable and seems to not work 100% of the time. I want to know how to disable the touchpad using the upper right hand corner option.
    – William
    Dec 7, 2011 at 17:05
  • @William - in this case you should un-check this answer as definitive or edit your question to fit the answer. i have the same question that is like a duplicate of yours in its present form. now it is as if my question has an answer here when it has not. this is an answer to this question
    – user47206
    Oct 18, 2014 at 13:17
0

I've found that blacklisting or removing the 'touchpad' completely is what I wanted.

So if you have annoying behaviour while typing in Linux and you can use a USB mouse instead you can do this:

To disable the touchpad:

sudo modprobe -r psmouse

To re-enable the touchpad:

sudo modprobe psmouse
0

In Ubuntu 17.04 there's a "System Setting" for "ignore touchpad while typing" that might be generally useful (not enabled by default):

System Settings/Mouse & Touchpad

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .