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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.

metalhead696
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    All the suggestion here don't work for Ubuntu 16.10. As a matter of fact, the solution of @DevNull will disable your trackpad completely. I'm still looking for a solution, but wanted to comment so people are not getting their trackpad disabled. – Nitai Nov 29 '16 at 01:23
  • @Nitai's comments goes the same for me as of Ubuntu 17.10 – LeoRochael Feb 07 '18 at 18:03
  • ArchLinux user here: I installed `synaptics` and `xorg-input` and either of these brought the setting back. – phil294 Mar 24 '19 at 10:08

6 Answers6

14

I found a similar question AskUbuntu which provided a link to the details needed to solve this issue.

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.

Community
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Cloud
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10

This works fine for me (ubuntu 16.04): 

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/atareao  
sudo apt-get update  
sudo apt-get install touchpad-indicator

Launch touchpad-indicator, and go to the Actions menu. Select the Disable the touchpad on typing option.

source

Kaz Wolfe
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sumant
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    I've used this, but have found it to be quite unreliable. One major annoyance is the fact that is interprets keyboard shortcuts (such as CTRL+S) as 'typing', meaning every time I save I have to wait half a second before I can use the mouse. EDIT: my bad, you need to `killall syndaemon` first. – Niek Mar 30 '17 at 09:48
  • worked for me dell latitude 5580 – Ramesh-X Feb 15 '18 at 04:03
1

Adding to DevNull's solution, I added this command:

syndaemon -i 0.50 -m 0.10 -d -K

to my startup application's command. In this way, it still works even after rebooting.

Stephen Rauch
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Jay
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0

When searching the internet for an answer to this problem, I found a page that suggested using syndaemon to accomplish this (found here: http://www.webupd8.org/2009/11/ubuntu-automatically-disable-touchpad.html). I used the command "syndaemon -i 2 -d -K" in terminal for my needs. This command disables the touchpad while typing for two seconds (-i 2), except when modifier keys such as Alt or Shift are used (-K).

Hope that helps!

Passing Through
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0

The touchpad settings are gone probably because libinput has been installed. It does not have GUI settings.

In Ubuntu 16.10 it is installed by default.

You can either remove xserver-xorg-input-libinput or xserver-xorg-input-libinput-hwe-16.04 to get GUI back, or use a config file for this kind of settings.

Pilot6
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-1

In gnome exists an extension that works perfect: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/131/touchpad-indicator/

Ariel Ruiz
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  • Ubuntu 16.04 LTS uses Unity, and not GNOME Shell, by default. This only works if you've installed `gnome-shell` or `ubuntu-gnome-desktop` or are using the GNOME flavor of Ubuntu. – Lucas Sep 21 '17 at 04:17