Disable touchpad tap to click?

[MarkHaysHarris777]

What would be really handy is if the tap-to-click were a configurable property (and a unique event) so that we could ignor just that one;  

This touchpad is really poorly designed. It would be nice if there was a way to hack the firmware of this touchpad or replace it with something better.   Documentation from Hailuck is non-existent.

Yes, but here's the rub-- many expensive notebooks have this same issue !  I put that script on my daughter's Asus when she went to Luther college, and I put it on my son's HP DVD series when he went to Iowa State. My HP g6 series also has the same issue, and the same script; 

And think about this, almost all notebooks put the danged touchpad in the palm rest position so that its impossible to type without causing havoc with the touchpad !  Even the Holy Mac Book Pro has the same issue.  So, I think over time some of this may change;  but , it doesn't look like anytime soon.  

I have used quite a few notebooks from MacBook Pro's (current machine) down to Chromebooks. None of them had the problem of the cursor jumping around because of a slight touch of the touchpad. The tap-to-click on this touchpad is fundamentally broken. To fix they need to either tune the sensitivity or disable the tap-to-click functionality.

I must admit the touchpad on the pinebook is overly sensitive;  I noticed it on mine right away too.

[pfeerick]

Yes, but here's the rub-- many expensive notebooks have this same issue !

Is that really true? Or is it the fact that you promptly removed the operating system that had the drivers with the palm-guard checking functionality built in? :-P I think the issue you are conveniently not mentioning is that the manufactures aren't supporting linux anywhere near as well as they do Windows (yup, that ol' chestnut again!), and since you want to use Linux instead of windows, you are opting for a life of pain and suffering re: the touchpad. :-P Although I don't think this should be a problem for the plain Synaptic or ALPS touchpads... and more of an issue for those modified ones (yes, looking at you Lenovo... WTF where you thinking!!!) Anyway, I won't say any more on this topic, as we are deviating away from the OPs topic

Hopefully in the future we get some more info about the touchpads core functionality and get it to be more programmable, or can add some monitoring functionality that selectively disables and re-enables the touchpad based on keyboard activity... Then again, we should really look at enabling the palm detection that is built right into libinput. It may just be a matter of tweaking the hardware database so libinput knows more about the touchpad... or maybe it will need stronger encouragement

[MarkHaysHarris777]

Yes, but here's the rub-- many expensive notebooks have this same issue !

Is that really true? Or is it the fact that you promptly removed the operating system that had the drivers with the palm-guard checking functionality built in? :-P I think the issue you are conveniently not mentioning is that the manufactures aren't supporting linux anywhere near as well as they do Windows (yup, that ol' chestnut again!), and since you want to use Linux instead of windows, you are opting for a life of pain and suffering re: the touchpad. :-P 

Oh, yes, absolutely correct, Pete !  I'm not trying to be deceptive in any way, I'm assuming a linux environment totally, and because the pinebook is going to be a linux environment (primarily) and not windows.  
I think our driver could be improved to compensate for the palm-rest.  Also, I am sure our driver could compensate for the over-sensitive nature of this particular hardware; no doubts, however there doesn't seem to be a way to separate out the tap-to-click since that is just a hardware automated button-1 press|release. I am willing to admit that the driver 'may' control this too!  In such a case (albeit rare) the driver could be programmed to ignore the tap-to-click activity and either send a different button-event or swallow the activity all-together;  
On the other hand, if the driver had palm-rest detection, disabling the tap-to-click might not be necessary either.

[colin.faulkingham]

Yes, but here's the rub-- many expensive notebooks have this same issue !

Then again, we should really look at enabling the palm detection that is built right into libinput. It may just be a matter of tweaking the hardware database so libinput knows more about the touchpad... or maybe it will need stronger encouragement

Not that it's going to make much difference, I don't think it's using libinput it's using evdev.

[combs]

i mean, at a minimum, could it just ignore the touchpad for 2 seconds after a keypress...

[MarkHaysHarris777]

i mean, at a minimum, could it just ignore the touchpad for 2 seconds after a keypress...

Yes, the X interface could swallow (ignore) button 1 events for so many milliseconds after a keypress;  would solve the problem.

[NoSalt]

So ... is this script still the accepted "fix" to disable touchpad tap-to-click? Also, does this work if you have Android loaded on the PineBook? I have a PineBook 1080P and the tap-to-click is driving me crazy.

[ab1jx]

I think part of  the problem is that it can do a dozen or so undocumented things like gestures, which frankly I don't care about.  Not sure if the Pinebook Pro has the same touchpad as the original or not but it's a challenge trying to live with it.  Go into /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d, make backup copies and start hacking.  Right now I've broken my right click but that's today's fun.  I could plug in an actual mouse.  Try "man synaptics", there are almost 40 options.  You'll probably need to reboot to see the effects of changes, unless you get ctrl-alt-backspace working.  X needs to restart.

A quick look on Aliexpress, type "touchpad" and "replacement" in the search box and you'll find 30 or more.  No idea how compatible they might be, they seem to be for Macbooks mostly.  And a black touchpad in a black laptop, I have to dig out my flashlight to find the edges of it.

I never bought myself a new laptop before, but I'm retired now.  I bought 6 or so used ones over 25 years, mostly off-lease fixer-uppers from eBay,  Dell Latitudes.  I've replaced touchpads, keyboards, motherboards, hard drives, batteries, wifi cards, just about everything.  With service manual PDFs.  I think the touchpad is the worst aspect of the machine.  Proofreading with my magnifying glass.

Oh
alias bigrx='urxvt -fn "xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:pixelsize=15"'
will get you a nice big rxvt window, assuming you have rxvt  (rxvt-unicode) installed.  rxvt is maybe the only terminal emulator that works right with mc.  Try an alt-i or alt-h, if the terminal emulator want to do something, it's useless.  It used to zoom on ctrl-shift-+ but that's been broken since unicode was added.

ctrl-alt (left or right arrow) switches desktop panes.

[jezek]

I have a opposite problem. On my pinebook 1080p the "tap to click" is not working, and I've tried to make it work multiple times with no success. I have to use the "hidden" (ii's not exactly hidden, but part of touchpad) hw button, that makes loud "click" noise, which drives me crazy at night and also, I'm used to tap, so I end up tapping multiple times, then remembering it's not working...

[ab1jx]

I have a opposite problem.  On my pinebook 1080p the "tap to click" is not working, and I've tried to make it work multiple times with no success. I have to use the "hidden" (ii's not exactly hidden, but part of touchpad) hw button, that makes loud "click" noise, which drives me crazy at night and also, I'm used to tap, so I end up tapping multiple times, then remembering it's not working...

See man synaptics and edit your xorg.conf files after backing them up.  Try xset q and see what you get.  I don't see any synaptics stuff in there though.  Some of this stuff is optional, not everybody will have it installed.  I can remember installing synaptics years ago so I could turn off tap to click.  You should have xserver-xorg-input-synaptics installed but be aware that it has about 40 options in your xorg conf sections.

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Another thing to do is look in your /var/og/Xorg.0.log file after you make changes and restart X to see if they took effect.  I see

Code:

[    26.859] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'HAILUCK CO.,LTD USB KEYBOARD'
[    26.861] (II) systemd-logind: got fd for /dev/input/event1 13:65 fd 28 paused 0
[    26.861] (**) HAILUCK CO.,LTD USB KEYBOARD: always reports core events
[    26.861] (**) Option "Device" "/dev/input/event1"
[    26.862] (**) Option "_source" "server/udev"
[    26.864] (II) input device 'HAILUCK CO.,LTD USB KEYBOARD', /dev/input/event1 is tagged by udev as: Keyboard
[    26.864] (II) input device 'HAILUCK CO.,LTD USB KEYBOARD', /dev/input/event1 is a keyboard
[    26.864] (**) Option "config_info" "udev:/sys/devices/platform/fe3a0000.usb/usb3/3-1/3-1:1.0/0003:258A:001E.0001/input/input1/event1"
[    26.864] (II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "HAILUCK CO.,LTD USB KEYBOARD" (type: KEYBOARD, id 6)
[    26.864] (**) Option "xkb_model" "pc105"
[    26.864] (**) Option "xkb_layout" "us"
[    26.866] (II) input device 'HAILUCK CO.,LTD USB KEYBOARD', /dev/input/event1 is tagged by udev as: Keyboard
[    26.866] (II) input device 'HAILUCK CO.,LTD USB KEYBOARD', /dev/input/event1 is a keyboard
[    26.869] (II) config/udev: Adding input device HAILUCK CO.,LTD USB KEYBOARD Touchpad (/dev/input/event2)
[    26.869] (**) HAILUCK CO.,LTD USB KEYBOARD Touchpad: Applying InputClass "libinput touchpad catchall"
[    26.869] (**) HAILUCK CO.,LTD USB KEYBOARD Touchpad: Applying InputClass "Touchpads"
[    26.869] (II) LoadModule: "mtrack"
[    26.869] (WW) Warning, couldn't open module mtrack
[    26.869] (II) UnloadModule: "mtrack"
[    26.870] (II) Unloading mtrack
[    26.870] (EE) Failed to load module "mtrack" (module does not exist, 0)
[    26.870] (EE) No input driver matching `mtrack'
[    26.870] (II) Falling back to input driver `libinput'
[    26.870] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'HAILUCK CO.,LTD USB KEYBOARD Touchpad'
[    26.871] (II) systemd-logind: got fd for /dev/input/event2 13:66 fd 31 paused 0
[    26.872] (**) HAILUCK CO.,LTD USB KEYBOARD Touchpad: always reports core events
[    26.872] (**) Option "Device" "/dev/input/event2"
[    26.872] (**) Option "_source" "server/udev"
[    26.873] (II) input device 'HAILUCK CO.,LTD USB KEYBOARD Touchpad', /dev/input/event2 is tagged by udev as: Touchpad
[    26.874] (II) input device 'HAILUCK CO.,LTD USB KEYBOARD Touchpad', /dev/input/event2 is a touchpad
[    26.874] (**) Option "config_info" "udev:/sys/devices/platform/fe3a0000.usb/usb3/3-1/3-1:1.1/0003:258A:001E.0002/input/input2/event2"
[    26.874] (II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "HAILUCK CO.,LTD USB KEYBOARD Touchpad" (type: TOUCHPAD, id 7)
[    26.875] (**) Option "AccelerationScheme" "none"
[    26.875] (**) HAILUCK CO.,LTD USB KEYBOARD Touchpad: (accel) selected scheme none/0
[    26.875] (**) HAILUCK CO.,LTD USB KEYBOARD Touchpad: (accel) acceleration factor: 2.000
[    26.875] (**) HAILUCK CO.,LTD USB KEYBOARD Touchpad: (accel) acceleration threshold: 4
[    26.876] (II) input device 'HAILUCK CO.,LTD USB KEYBOARD Touchpad', /dev/input/event2 is tagged by udev as: Touchpad
[    26.877] (II) input device 'HAILUCK CO.,LTD USB KEYBOARD Touchpad', /dev/input/event2 is a touchpad
[    26.878] (II) config/udev: Adding input device gpio-keys (/dev/input/event0)
[    26.878] (**) gpio-keys: Applying InputClass "libinput keyboard catchall"

There's no mention of Synaptic in there at all, that driver's not getting loaded apparently.  It's using libinput which is much more general purpose.  This file gets created every time X starts up, and the old one gets renamed to Xorg.0.log.old