Ubuntu – 18.04 recently lost tap-to-click at login (gdm)

18.04gdmtouchpad

I recently lost tap-to-click ability at the login screen (gdm). I originally enabled it in 17.10 and it survived into 18.04 until a few days ago. So I'm not sure what happened.

I followed instructions here by doing:

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

But I'm getting this error message:

(process:26095): dconf-CRITICAL **: 17:43:24.120: unable to create
directory '/home/user/.cache/dconf': Permission denied. dconf will
not work properly.

(process:26095): dconf-WARNING **: 17:43:24.120: failed to commit
changes to dconf: Could not connect: Connection refused

And when I run to try and fix:

sudo -u gdm dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad tap-to-click true

I get this:

(process:26477): dconf-WARNING **: 17:52:56.774: failed to commit
changes to dconf:
GDBus.Error:org.gtk.GDBus.UnmappedGError.Quark._g_2dfile_2derror_2dquark.Code2:
Cannot open dconf database: Failed to open file
“/home/user/.config/dconf/user”: Permission denied

I decided to try deleting ~/.cache/dconf and tried again to no avail.

Can anyone help?
Thanks.

Edited to add more info.

Best Answer

Try this: Enable ‘Tap to click’ in Ubuntu. It worked for me.

  1. Open terminal via Ctrl+Alt+T, then run command to get root privileges:

    sudo -i

    Type in your password (no visual feedback while typing) when it prompts and press Enter.

  2. (Not required in default Wayland session) Allow user gdm to create a connection to the X server:

    xhost +SI:localuser:gdm

  3. Switch to user gdm in the terminal:

    su gdm -s /bin/bash

  4. Finally enable 'Tap to click' via gdm user:

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

    enter image description here

  5. Restart your computer and done.

    sudo reboot

How to Restore:

To restore the setting, open terminal and redo the previous steps except run the following command instead of the command in Step 4:

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