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I recently made a fresh install of Ubuntu Mate 16.04 on my laptop that has a touchpad.

I assume it's a "feature" that my pointer keeps disappearing whenever I start typing. This occurs in any application, any place that takes text entry. However, I find it's not ideal for me. It seems to take a few moments for the pointer to come back to life after it's been hidden, which interrupts my sense of how the touchpad and pointer should be operating.

Where do I find the interface to control this behaviour and turn it off?

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    Start typing where? in the terminal, or in general? Could this be related? superuser.com/questions/902909/…
    – noleti
    Oct 13, 2016 at 5:37
  • @Thank you for responding. The mouse disappears whenever I type anywhere that typing can be done. Any application, any place that takes text entry. The link you provided seems to be talking about just Gnome Terminal, but what I am experiencing applies system wide to everything.
    – Questioner
    Oct 13, 2016 at 13:07
  • ok, can't help you more then - I run Xubuntu for a good reason :)
    – noleti
    Oct 13, 2016 at 15:27
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    There is a small program that does exactly that - hide the mouse pointer when you start typing. It is called unclutter. You don't happen to have that running? (Also, you seem to mean the mouse pointer, not the cursor. The cursor is the vertical bar in a text field or window that indicates where the next letter will appear.)
    – Jos
    Oct 13, 2016 at 18:55
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    @Jos It is called cursor in some languages though.
    – Carolus
    Oct 13, 2016 at 19:39

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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+100

In MATE, the settings has gone for some reason. But if you're referring to the disabling of cursor while typing, that settings can be disabled from gsettings.

Here is the command in gsettings command for MATE

gsettings set org.mate.peripherals-touchpad disable-while-typing false
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  • Thank you for this suggestion. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have changed the pointer behaviour.
    – Questioner
    Oct 17, 2016 at 3:29
  • @Questioner If you set it to true or false does it change the behavior of the touchpad at all? If you cant move cursor while pressing keys (when it's set to true) then we can at least conclude that this direction doesnt contain the solution to the problem. :)
    – Carolus
    Oct 17, 2016 at 15:50
  • @Questioner That is the settings that control disable tapping while typing. Can you verify that you have synaptic device? What is the output of xinput --list?
    – Anwar
    Oct 19, 2016 at 15:52
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    Thank you for this response. Actually, for reasons unrelated to this question, I ended up re-installing MATE, and this time the pointer seems to be behaving more intuitively. Unfortunately, this means I can't verify this answer and follow up comments, but I appreciate you were pursuing the issue to help me, so I awarded the bounty here. Thanks for your time.
    – Questioner
    Oct 20, 2016 at 7:13
  • @Questioner You can at verify the behaviour now by altering false and true. Does this work?
    – Anwar
    Oct 20, 2016 at 7:15
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As @Carolus guessed, it is in the mouse properties. You can reach it from the Mate start menu by searching for "mouse", or by entering mate-mouse-properties in a terminal.

In the mouse properties window, choose the Touchpad tab and uncheck "disable touchpad while typing".

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I would advise looking in System Settings (might be called slightly differently in your distro) section of Mouse and Touchpad or it might be called Input devices. At least in Kubuntu 16.04 and Xubuntu 14.04, that is where I found the checkbox "Disable touchpad while typing". Unchecking that gave the desired results for me with the aforementioned 2 flavors of Ubuntu. I hope Mate is similar.

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  • Which version of Ubuntu did you find the settings? It was there a long ago, but not anymore.
    – Anwar
    Oct 15, 2016 at 13:09
  • I checked it definitely in Kubuntu 16.04 and Xubuntu 14.04
    – Carolus
    Oct 16, 2016 at 14:05
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    Well, Where is it in Kubuntu? Though You know the OP is it MATE
    – Anwar
    Oct 16, 2016 at 14:21
  • i wonder if this is a hardware or software cursor issue , i think there are some xorg settings for that
    – Amias
    Oct 17, 2016 at 13:36
  • @Anwar Oh sorry, somehow missed the question. It is (on Kubuntu 16.04) under System Settings > Input Devices > Touchpad > Enable/Disable Touchpad > Disable touchpad when typing
    – Carolus
    Jul 12, 2017 at 16:00

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