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I upgraded my ubuntu gnome installation to 16.04.3 LTS (GNOME) and everything is kinda good except for the touchpad single-tap functionality. Single-tap-to-click is not working.

Edit (by cipricus - in order to avoid creating a duplicate question): not only is it not working, but the setting presented in Gnome Help here (Open the Activities overview and start typing Mouse & Touchpad. - Click on Mouse & Touchpad to open the panel. - In the Touchpad section, check Tap to click.) is not applicable in Ubuntu Gnome 16.04, as the Touchpad section is simply absent there:

enter image description here

How come? I know this is already answered, but why is the Touchpad section absent? I will add a bounty for this.

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  • thanks for the edit, the question is much more complete like this
    – smasper
    Nov 19, 2017 at 23:40
  • I had the same problem on Ubuntu 18.04, and fixed it by going in the Devices section of the Settings GUI, and re-enabling the Tap to Click option
    – glS
    May 15, 2018 at 11:39

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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+50

I've found a permanent solution with this command

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad tap-to-click true

Gnome starting at 3.20 only allows configuring devices using the libinput driver. So if you are not using the libinput driver, it won't show up in the GUI.

Comment from discussion gnome 3.22 still does not detect tap to click?.

Additionally, GNOME may override certain behaviors, like turning off Tapping and forcing Natural Scrolling. In this case the settings must be adapted using GNOMEs gsettings command line tool or a graphical frontend of your choice. For example if you wish to enable Tapping and disable Natural Scrolling for your user, adjust the touchpad key-values like the following:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad tap-to-click true

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Libinput#Touchpad_not_working_in_GNOME

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  • great, trying Gnome 3 for the first time and my only hope is askubuntu.
    – user47206
    Nov 17, 2017 at 20:36
  • I am having the same problem with my Ubuntu 16.04 installation. I ran 'gsettings list-recursively org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad' and tap to click is set to true, (result: 'org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad tap-to-click true') but yet it doesn't work. The tap-to-click checkbox in the settings (Gnome 3) is set true as well. Any ideas?
    – Caio Mar
    Mar 21, 2018 at 15:45
  • I have had this problem no matter what I try. None of the solutions here work for more than a few seconds. I have a script that runs gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad tap-to-click true over and over again but even that fails and needs to be restarted. very frustrating.
    – Robert Baker
    Aug 2, 2019 at 19:05
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In 18.04 (with Unity 7) I had to install the synaptics driver:

sudo apt install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics
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  • 1
    Thanks! This resolved it for me in KDE and XFCE on 18.04 as well, on my Dell XPS 15z
    – cleary
    Aug 31, 2018 at 0:06
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    This resolved the issue for me on a Thinkpad X1 Carbon running Ubuntu 18.10 with Unity.
    – Jason McVetta
    May 14, 2019 at 5:57
  • 2
    using ubuntu 20.04 and it also works. thanks.
    – ssi-anik
    Feb 12, 2021 at 15:32
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I have created a script to automate this process. It will be automatically started when the system starts. So, you don't have to run the same command again and again. The link of the script is github.com/Ryko-git/click-on-touchpad .

The installation process is very easy. It is given on the github page.

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1
  • Can you please elaborate the reason behind the down vote. If it does not work please tell me, I will check it. My friend had similar problem this script solved his problem.
    – Ryko
    May 2, 2018 at 16:19

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