Only Click When Finger Touching Touchpad?

Question

Since I use 2 daily driver OSs (Linux & MacOS), I realized that, on MacOS, when you press down on the touchpad with your finger, it clicks on the button (or whatever you're hovering over), but if you push it down with something else (like a pencil or something) it will not click.

This is not the case with my Ubuntu laptop. On Ubuntu, as long as the trackpad is pressed down all the way, the OS will register a click (so it will register a click no matter what is touching it). Is there a way to make it so it will only press down if it senses the finger on top of the trackpad?

On Mac when you click all the way down with another item the trackpad doesn't trigger. On Ubuntu it does trigger.

Since this was unclear: MacOS and Ubuntu are on two separate laptops (I do not have MacOS running on a Dell laptop or anything)

the ubuntu-touch tag does not belong here, it is about a version of Ubuntu meant for phones. — Esther, May 17 '22 at 20:45
What computer do you have? That is likely a hardware-specific feature? Is it a Mac? — cocomac, May 17 '22 at 20:47
to be clear, on MacOS when you click all the way down with some other item the trackpad doesn't trigger? Or does it also allow single-tap to click in addition to the physical trackpad click? — Esther, May 17 '22 at 20:49
@Esther On Mac when you click all the way down with another item the trackpad doesn't trigger. On Ubuntu it does trigger — AlexFullinator, May 17 '22 at 20:53
to be clear: is this two separate laptops (a Dell and a MacBook) or just one Dell that you managed to run MacOS on? — Esther, May 18 '22 at 01:25

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered May 17 '22 at 21:07

I am pretty certain the answer is no, you can't get your Dell to behave like that.

This is a hardware difference, nothing to do with the OS. The responding to a finger but not the pencil etc. is similar behaviour to the home button on previous iphones: take the iphone 6 and earlier, the button clicked whether the phone was on or off: it's a physical button. The 7 onwards (until they abolished it) uses a taptic engine to generate a click when the device detects your finger. I bet if you turn off your Dell and press on the trackpad you'll get a click as it's a physical 'button' of sorts, on the Mac it'll go dead when the machine is off.

Aside from the clicking feeling itself, if you like the behaviour of being able to click by tapping with a finger but not an inanimate object, this might help: In settings, under 'mouse and touchpad', there's a setting 'Tap to click': check that that is enabled (I think it is by default; basically it allows you to tap lightly on the touchpad as a left click). That action will only work with skin contact, not things like pencils.

If you are concerned about accidentally clicking with other things, you could disable the physical buttons if you like too, leaving you with just a light tap on the touchpad to 'left-click': see this post How to disable physical mouse buttons below touchpad

It's not the complete deal in terms of turning your Dell touchpad into a Mac's, but it does emulate some of the behaviours.

for whatever reason I was sure the installs were both on the same device, and I was wondering how the OP installed MacOS on a Dell and got a hardware-specific (or at least driver-specific) feature to work, but of course, it's probably a different laptop that can't be made to work like the mac. — Esther, May 17 '22 at 21:10
@Esther - but if you are right (and I agree it's not clear) - my answer is complete nonsense! — Will, May 17 '22 at 22:10

Only Click When Finger Touching Touchpad?

1 Answers1