How to enable natural scrolling with Logitech Trackman and libinput

Question

I'm trying to enable natural scrolling for a Logitech Trackman trackball on 18.10.

Natural scrolling is set to enabled in the system settings and is working for the integrated trackpad of my computer, but it doesn't work for the USB trackball.

At boot, natural scrolling is disabled for this device:

> xinput list-props "Logitech USB Trackball"
...
libinput Natural Scrolling Enabled (289):   0
libinput Natural Scrolling Enabled Default (290):   0

I can successfully enable it while the system is running with the command:

> xinput set-int-prop \
  "Logitech USB Trackball" "libinput Natural Scrolling Enabled" 8 1
> xinput list-props "Logitech USB Trackball"
...
libinput Natural Scrolling Enabled (289):   1
libinput Natural Scrolling Enabled Default (290):   0

But this does not persist.

I have added a configuration file like so:

/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-logitech-trackman.conf:

Section "InputClass"
   Identifier       "TrackmanConfiguration"
   MatchProduct     "Logitech USB Trackball"
   Driver           "libinput"
   Option           "ButtonMapping" "1 8 3 4 5 6 7 2 9"
   Option           "ScrollMethod" "button"
   Option           "ScrollButton" "9"
   Option           "NaturalScrolling" "1"
EndSection

However, while the other settings from this file are respected, the NaturalScrolling option is ignored. I have also tried alternative values of "true" and "on" for the boolean value, but none of them work.

• What else could I do to enable natural scrolling at boot?
• How else could I debug this issue?

Update

After testing all libinput options that I could think of I have come to the conclusion that the NaturalScrolling option is completely ignored or overwritten by the global value for mouse natural scrolling set through the GUI or dconf, so a per-device preference is not possible in this case.

Dconf example:

dconf write /org/gnome/desktop/peripherals/mouse/natural-scroll true

Answer 1

This actually worked perfect for me. I disabled natural scrolling in the GUI because it was being weird for my Logitech T650.

With the GUI options disabled, this works perfect for all my trackpad devices that xinput detects:

#70-natural-scrolling.conf

Section "InputClass"
   Identifier       "TrackpadConfiguration"
   MatchProduct     "Logitech Rechargeable Touchpad T650"
   Driver           "libinput"
   Option           "NaturalScrolling" "1"
EndSection

Section "InputClass"
   Identifier       "TrackpadConfiguration"
   MatchProduct     "ELAN959A:00 04F3:3072 Mouse"
   Driver           "libinput"
   Option           "NaturalScrolling" "1"
EndSection

Section "InputClass"
   Identifier       "TrackpadConfiguration"
   MatchProduct     "LAN959A:00 04F3:3072 Touchpad"
   Driver           "libinput"
   Option           "NaturalScrolling" "1"
EndSection

Answer 2

I'm also using xinput to set certain properties for my laptop trackpad. The way I'm doing that is by putting the xinput [set-prop|set-int-prop] commands on my startup script. If you're using Gnome you can add custom command from Startup Applications.

Answer 3

You can use .bashrc to enable natural scrolling at boot! simply edit your .bashrc in your ~/ dir and append the command you are using to enable natural scrolling to end of the file(In a single line instead of using "\")