Ubuntu 17.10 Touchpad is too sensitive

Question

I'm suddenly experiencing issues with my touchpad, which has become way too sensitive. Whenever I touch it to move the pointer, that touch also registers as a click. If I hover over input fields like the one I'm typing in right now. It didn't happen with the Ubuntu 17.10 update, it just randomly happened today. It also happened to me once before, then a reboot did the trick, but that doesn't work this time.

This problem is basically the same as 14.04 Touchpad is too sensitive, but because of Wayland or something, all the proposed solutions from there are no longer valid.

Output of xinput list:

⎡ Virtual core pointer                      id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ xwayland-pointer:13                       id=6    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ xwayland-relative-pointer:13              id=7    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                     id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard               id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ xwayland-keyboard:13                      id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]

Answer 1

I resolved this by turning off tap-to-click in dconf-editor (/org/gnome/desktop/peripherals/touchpad/tap-to-click).

However, although this was already set to false, it was still responding to taps on the touchpad. To resolve this, I followed the instructions from here.

Run:

apt list --installed | grep xserver-xorg-input

look for the following packages:

• xserver-xorg-input-libinput (keep this)
• xserver-xorg-input-synaptics (remove this package)

Reboot.

Answer 2

gsettings allows you to edit these settings. I had the same problem and stumbled across a few other posts.

First, find your touchpad name with:

gsettings list-schemas | grep touchpad

It might be something like org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad like mine. Then, you can see all the settings with:

gsettings list-keys org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad

But of course, replace with your touchpad name. Here is the list from mine:

send-events
natural-scroll
tap-to-click
two-finger-scrolling-enabled
left-handed
click-method
speed
scroll-method
tap-and-drag
edge-scrolling-enabled
disable-while-typing

To see the value of a setting, in this case speed:

gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad speed

Pointer speed for the touchpad. Accepted values are in the [-1..1] range (from "unaccelerated" to "fast"). A value of 0 is the system default.

I changed mine to -0.1 which seemed to work for me. To set a value on a setting, change get to set and put the new value on the end:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad speed -0.1

I don't know yet if these settings will persist as I just changed them. If anyone has improvements to this answer, please share!

Here are my references: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2383952, https://askubuntu.com/a/980275/802976