How to enable touchpad?

Question

Yesterday, suddenly my touchpad on my MSI Laptop started to not respond. In other words, in Login screen, touchpad is working as expected. However, in Desktop screen, after I have logged in, touchpad is not working.

How can I enable touchpad in Desktop?

Have you tried, the FN + function key combination? – Mitch Jul 04 '12 at 07:04 — Mitch, Jul 04 '12 at 07:04
@Mitch make this as answer, it works – Jul 04 '12 at 09:39 — , Jul 04 '12 at 09:39

score 24 · Answer 1 · edited Feb 14 '16 at 13:46

24

I accidentally disabled my touchpad. This is the way I found to re-enable it.

Press the "Windows key" to open the start menu. Type "terminal" and enter, to open the command line.

Then type:

xinput list

Find the 'id' of your touchpad. For me it looks like this:

Virtual core pointer                        id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint                     id=12   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad                id=11   [slave  pointer  (2)]

My touchpad has id = 11.

Then type

xinput set-prop 11 "Device Enabled" 1

(but replace 11 with whatever id your touchpad had)

edited Feb 14 '16 at 13:46

muru

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answered May 17 '15 at 16:35

avl_sweden

363

in my case I first have to run xset set-prop ... 0 and then xset set-prop ... 1 does the job... – Dima Pasechnik Jun 28 '16 at 08:57
you can use this aliases alias touchpad-off='xinput set-prop xinput --list |grep -oP "Touchpad.*id=\K.*?(?=\s)" "Device Enabled" 0' alias touchpad-on='xinput set-prop xinput --list |grep -oP "Touchpad.*id=\K.*?(?=\s)" "Device Enabled" 1' – barak Oct 08 '18 at 07:08

score 20 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 28 '19 at 19:05

20

This work for me on kali linux:

gsettings reset org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad send-events

The schemas dir can be found by:

gsettings list-schemas

Edit: This works on Ubuntu 18.04 as well.

edited Oct 28 '19 at 19:05

Felix Crazzolara

103

answered Jan 30 '17 at 00:26

Diverso

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worked for my fujitsu ah512 lifebook. Thankyou – Naveed Jamali Feb 06 '18 at 04:29
totally saved me – grabantot Feb 25 '19 at 17:31
This is the only one which works for me in Ubuntu 18.04, to reset changes made to the Enable Touchpad setting in the GNOME settings GUI. – Sman789 Mar 02 '19 at 23:54
This worked for Pop!_OS when nothing else did – Joseph8th Jun 08 '19 at 23:04
1

This worked for me on Ubuntu 18.04 – Felix Crazzolara Oct 19 '19 at 11:48
Works like a charm on Ubuntu 18.04 – saurabh baid Feb 16 '22 at 14:48
Works on Ubuntu 22.04 – Robert Rendell May 25 '23 at 16:40

score 14 · Answer 3 · edited Jan 12 '17 at 00:45

14

Running Ubuntu 16.04 there is a painfully simple way to re-enable the touchpad if you disabled it via the "Mouse & Touchpad GUI":

ALT+TAB to select the "Mouse & Touchpad GUI" if you currently do not have it focused. (Or use the Windows key -> Search for "Mouse and touchpad" -> ENTER)
Use TAB to iterate through the items within the GUI until the ON/OFF slider is highlighted.
Hit ENTER to toggle the switch back to "ON".

I realize this is very simple, but it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out.

edited Jan 12 '17 at 00:45

kelvinelove

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answered Jan 11 '17 at 19:05

BlackVegetable

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You sir are the real MVP. – eyeezzi Jan 19 '18 at 13:07
It's only obvious when you know the answer! – Chris Huang-Leaver Jul 29 '18 at 05:37
interestingly, my ubuntu 18 did not show this behaviour, i could not tab across the mouse and touchpoint GUI.. Had to plug a mouse in to re-activate. – Hightower May 15 '19 at 21:33
@Hightower that's too bad. I guess this is not something that will work with Ubuntu > 16 – BlackVegetable May 15 '19 at 22:24
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This doesn't work with 19.04 either. Silly interface. – Andrew B. Jun 20 '19 at 17:38

score 9 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 04 '12 at 07:32

9

You could try the following command in a terminal and see if it helps, I always used it to restart the touchpad on 11.10 when it stopped working, but I have had no problems on 12.04.

synclient Touchpadoff=0

answered Jul 04 '12 at 07:32

Fernhill Linux Project

3,899

I have tried but touchpad is still not work – Jul 04 '12 at 08:53
This no longer works under recent Ubuntu since libinput is used. – Konrad Gajewski Aug 18 '18 at 10:23
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I don't know how i disabled the touchpad, but this solved it and it's working again !! Thanks!. You avoid me buying a new laptop ( i was going to smash it). – bistoco Nov 28 '18 at 04:47
@KonradGajewski This still works under Xubuntu 18.04. – Chai T. Rex Jun 20 '19 at 22:06

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 04 '12 at 09:42

8

Make sure that the Touchpad is enabled. On an MSI laptop to Enable or disable the touchpad: FN+F3.

answered Jul 04 '12 at 09:42

Mitch

107,631

score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 04 '12 at 08:23

2

I don't recall having this problem in 12.04 either but running the gpointing-device-settings command and unchecking Disable touchpad always did it for me in 11.10.

answered Jul 04 '12 at 08:23

Ikalou

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I have tried but touchpad is still not work – Jul 04 '12 at 08:54

score 2 · Answer 7 · answered Oct 03 '16 at 11:13

I'm using Linux Mint and disabled the touchpad, and like others before me, I noticed how hard it is to switch it back on if you don't have a mouse handy.

Using the Mint Preferences to disable the touchpad won't let you enable it again by using xinput or synclient as suggested in various places.

tl;dr

gsettings set org.cinnamon.settings-daemon.peripherals.touchpad touchpad-enabled true

Longer version on how I managed to get it back.

I dumped the cinnamon config to a file with:

'dconf dump /org/cinnamon/ > mysettings'

Under the heading 'settings-daemon/peripherals/touchpad' i found 'touchpad-enabled=false'

List the schemas and find something related to the touchpad

gsettings list-schemas | grep touchpad

List the keys in the touchpad-schema

gsettings list-keys org.cinnamon.settings-daemon.peripherals.touchpad

Enable the touchpad

gsettings set org.cinnamon.settings-daemon.peripherals.touchpad touchpad-enabled true

Some useful links:

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Mar 17 '14 at 02:40

I have had the same problem but I found the fix for mine to be very simple. I unplugged my mouse out of the USB port on the laptop and the touchpad immediately started working again. It disables the touchpad when you have a mouse plugged in. My Laptop's model is the MSI Apache Pro-012 (GE70)

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Sep 01 '17 at 03:24

0

There is a little button at the bottom of your keyboard on the laptop (sometimes just above the touchpad) mine looks like a W but isn't Windows key, if you have that tiny button it enables and disables your touchpad.

answered Sep 01 '17 at 03:24

Terry

1

How to enable touchpad?

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