Windows – Anyone know how to modify settings for the Apple Magic Trackpad on Windows (without Boot Camp)

magic-trackpadwindows

Anyone know how to modify settings for the Apple Magic Trackpad on Windows (without Boot Camp)?

I was able to install the driver and make it work.

However, tap-to-click appears to be on by default, and I think this would work much better if I could turn that off.

The problem with just installing the drivers is you don't get the Boot Camp control panel so you can't adjust settings.

Has anyone figured out where the settings for the trackpad are stored?

Best Answer

Attaching a debugger to the BootCamp control panel, one can see that the settings are written with an IOCTL of the format CTL_CODE(FILE_DEVICE_MOUSE, 0x801, METHOD_BUFFERED, FILE_ANY_ACCESS). The data written matches what is found in the Windows Registry at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Apple Inc.\Trackpad\Mode. I've determined the format of this entry to be:

0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1  0x6F
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | tap to click
| | | | | | dragging
| | | | | drag lock
| | | | [reserved, always 1]
| | | [reserved, always 0]
| | secondary tap
| secondary click
bottom left (0 for bottom right)

I wrote a quick program that will read this registry entry and write the settings to the \\.\AppleWirelessTrackpad device. Download it here (source code available, contributions welcome). Someone with Windows programming experience could add a nice UI and have it run as a service to detect and initialize when the device is [re]connected.

For my personal setup I manually changed the registry setting (0x6b: defaults, minus drag lock!) and run this program as a Windows Scheduled Task (at login). On the rare occasion that the pad loses sync between reboots, I just run the program again manually to refresh the settings.

Here is a sample registry file, save as plain text then double-click to apply:

File disableTapToClick.reg:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Apple Inc.\Trackpad]
"Mode"=dword:0000006e

Additional sample registry files available on the downloads page.

Related Question