Ubuntu – How to enable disable touchpad from double-clicking on its special area

14.04touchpadxubuntu

I have a laptop HP-Pavilion-g (1246-ef) running in dual boot Windows and Xubuntu. In Windows I can use its special area (a small dip) in the upper left corner of the touchpad to disable / enable on double click. A small red light is seen when disabled.

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Can I activate this feature in Ubuntu? I do not want a workaround. I want a solution to get that working without scripts and commands.

(I am not talking about How to quickly enable/disable touchpad in Xubuntu – that I know.)

(A funny thing: when I disable the touchpad in Windows and then restart in Ubuntu the touchpad cannot be enabled and is not seen as disabled in Ubuntu. But if I shut down completely (shut down, not restart) and boot in Ubuntu, this setting is reset and the touchpad is active. But maybe this has not much to do with the above question)

(X)ubuntu 14.04 3.13.0-39-generic

NOTE that this question is aiming exclusively at using in X(ubuntu) the hardware option that the laptop has (that is the 'dip', that button), and NOT at finding a workaround, a terminal command or a software option to disable the touchpad.

Best Answer

You should report this as a bug. The best place to report this is the xserver-xorg-input-synaptics package (FreeDesktop Bugs). See this question for good bug reporting guidelines. You can also post the bug link here, and I will update its status periodically. I have placed a workaround down below in case you want to try an alternate solution. Please note that you will be reporting a bug to the FreeDesktop system. After logging in, choose report a bug. Report the bug against the Xorg package. When prompted for the component, make sure to select input/synaptics. Fill in any other specific information that is needed.

Bug Tracker for ID NaN

Status: Lookup Error 3
Importance: Lookup Error 3
Assigned To: Lookup Error 3

(Link to Bug)

In a short answer, this is not possible because there are no Linux drivers that do this. (Report a bug to possibly get one!)

This touchpad works by having that dipped area be its own button. When it is double-tapped, the Windows driver says "Hey, I should disable/enable the touchpad!". It then sends the disable or enable message to the touchpad, settings its state.

When you reboot, power to the touchpad isn't lost. So, whatever state it was in is kept. When you fully shut down, power is lost, so the state is reset.

AFAIK, there is no method to do this with that dip, at least kernel-wise. You may be able to write your own driver, but that is beyond the scope of this question (and possibly even this site).

You may be able to do a little workaround, which goes like this:

  1. First off, find your touchpad in xinput-list. Remeber the ID.

  2. Save this into /usr/bin:

    #!/bin/bash

if [ -e /tmp/mouse-disabled ]; then
  rm -f /tmp/mouse-disabled
  xinput enable [id]
else
  touch /tmp/mouse-disabled
  xinput disable [id]
fi;

  3. Replace all instances with ID with your proper id.

  4. Create a Keyboard Shortcut. Make this the program to be run, and assign any keybind you want. I used Win+Ctrl+T for a while.

(Sourced from most posts here and this post.)

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