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I checked the Synaptics touchpad configuration using terminal, but what I saw is that palm detection was set to 0 like in the picture below.

enter image description here

From my experience, 0 means 'FALSE'. This means NO PALM DETECTION. I would like to set my Synaptics touchpad to recognize my palm.

How can I do that? Could you all please help?

Liu Bei
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    this question has already been asked and is answered here; https://askubuntu.com/questions/938659/how-to-fix-palm-detection-in-ubuntu-17-04 – goedt May 02 '18 at 18:59
  • Which command did you use to check this? – khatchad Jun 20 '21 at 17:42
  • I'm on Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS, with proprietary Nvidia drivers, and Wayland is disabled by default. There are tutorials online on how to enable it, but there are inherent drawbacks to using Wayland with Nvidia hardware. My personal solution might be off-topic, but I'm gradually just switching my typing position to raising my wrist. I believe it's better ergonomically anyway, and you bypass any need to detect palms this way. – user165753 Oct 28 '23 at 00:48

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My solution might not work for you, but I fixed this issue by switching to Wayland.

I use the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga 3rd Gen, and the palm detection features when using X.org didn't seem to do anything. I knew that the hardware was capable of doing true Apple trackpad style palm detection, because, on Windows, I could rub my palm vigorously across the touchpad and the mouse pointer wouldn't budge.

To switch to Wayland, log out of your user account, and there should be an option on the login page that shows a dropdown with "Wayland" as an option. If not, see this answer for more details.

Voila! I can now smear my whole palm on the touchpad again and not worry about accidental taps and mouse movement.

Ryan Hart
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  • Thank you very much! I had been annoyed by this problem for so long and nothing else I'd tried worked. – bradhd Feb 06 '21 at 19:26