Ubuntu – “Disable Touchpad while typing option” gone in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

16.04touchpad

This option, which was present in the "Mouse and Touchpad" settings panel in previous versions, is for some reason absent in 16.04 LTS. Does anyone know why this is, and/or how to fix it? Thanks.

Best Answer

In short, edit your quirks file:

sudo vim /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/51-synaptics-quirks.conf

And add the following to the end of the file:

# Disable generic Synaptics device, as we're using
# "DLL0704:01 06CB:76AE Touchpad"
# Having multiple touchpad devices running confuses syndaemon
Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"
        MatchProduct "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
        MatchOS "Linux"
        MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
        Option "Ignore" "on"
EndSection

Now restart Xorg:

sudo systemctl restart lightdm

Now, just start syndaemon as usual:

killall syndaemon
syndaemon -i 0.50 -m 0.10 -d -K

Note: For some reason, two-finger scrolling didn't work until I fully rebooted my laptop, but it eventually started working.

Edit

I eventually installed touchpad indicator like another answer suggests, when I had to switch to a different Dell laptop, and this fix no longer worked.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to disable touchpad while typing in 15.10

I use Touchpad-Indicator, a very flexible app. It is not available from Ubuntu repositories, so you need to add one manually.

Latest version: add the repository with

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/atareao

Then, install as usual:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install touchpad-indicator

To obtain desired option (disable touchpad while typing), Open the program and select that option from Preferences -> Actions.

Don't forget to add the app to the startup list, so this is always enabled. You can do this within the same program, from Preferences -> General options tab.

Now it should work. If it does not work at the beginning, restart the computer/session (some users mention that as an extra step).

If it still does not work, it might be because of this bug. The workaround is to create an empty configuration file that the program is unable to create itself. This is how (using the terminal):

mkdir ~/.config/touchpad-indicator
echo '{}' > ~/.config/touchpad-indicator/touchpad-indicator.conf 
sudo chmod 777 ~/.config/touchpad-indicator/touchpad-indicator.conf

Then open the program and configure it again. You can then check that the new configuration variables are inside that file.

Older version (14.04 Trusty, known to work):

If for any reason it still does not work, then try a different version of the program. First, if tried the method above, uninstall it with:

`sudo apt-get purge touchpad-indicator`

Also, remove ppa with:

sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/atareao-atareao-trusty.list
sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/atareao-atareao-trusty.list.save

Then, add this ppa:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:baltix-members/ppa

If you are not using Trusty, then you need to change the ppa version. Go to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, open the above ppa (called baltix-members-ppa-trusty.list) and edit the ubuntu version so that the files contain trusty as below:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/baltix-members/ppa/ubuntu trusty main

Then install:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install touchpad-indicator

Ubuntu – How to disable mouse touchpad while typing on Dell XPS 13 (Ubuntu 16.04 LTS)

To Disable Touchpad Goto -> System Settings -> Mouse & Touchpad : in the Touchpad section switch from ON to OFF

Best Answer

Edit

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to disable touchpad while typing in 15.10

Ubuntu – How to disable mouse touchpad while typing on Dell XPS 13 (Ubuntu 16.04 LTS)

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