0

On xfce, I can just do it in the settings, but I am trying to switch to i3.

Running this command when I am booted disables the touchpad effectively:

xinput set-prop "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" "Device Enabled" 0

I am on Ubuntu 17.10 so I did not find rc.local in /etc/.

I looked around and found this solution on stackexchange which reenables rc.local on systemd.

So, I followed it and added the above command to rc.local which now exists.

However, my touchpad is not being disabled so I am not sure what to do.

Vpie649
  • 101

2 Answers2

2

You can disable the touchpad on boot up by creating a .desktop entry in your /.config/autostart/ directory.

In order to perform that, follow the below steps.

First we need to create the desktop entry in .config/autostart/ in the home directory of our user using the following command.

touch /home/<user>/.config/autostart/touchpad.desktop (file name is optional)

then we need to add entries in the file and make the file executable.

vim /home/<user>/.config/autostart/touchpad.desktop

and paste the following in that file.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Disable touchpad
GenericName=Touchpad disabler
Comment=Disables touchpad
Exec=xinput set-prop "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" "Device Enabled" 0
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Name=touchpad.desktop

save the file and exit the editor.

And make it executable using the following steps 

chmod 755 /home/<user>/.config/autostart/touchpad.desktop

Reboot and check. Your touch pad would be disabled in your login.

To enable tocuhpad after disabling it, you may run the following in a terminal.

xinput set-prop "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" "Device Enabled" 1

Note that this would enable touchpad only for the current session. You have to remove the desktop entry or change the value from 0 to 1 in order to enable the touchpad on boot up.

If you want to disable the touchpad only and not the physical buttons (Left and right click), then

replace Exec=xinput set-prop "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" "Device Enabled" 0 to 

Exec=synclient TouchpadOff=1
ran
  • 375
  • The script works, but adding it to crontab doesn't seem to make it execute on boot, unless I did something wrong. – Vpie649 Dec 19 '17 at 20:56
  • @Vpie649 Please try the new method which i have edited in the answer. – ran Dec 20 '17 at 06:37
  • @ran I did exactly what you have suggested but it doesnt work for me (Xubuntu), although the turn off command works just fine in the shell. – Sebastian Mar 22 '18 at 10:51
0

Putting

exec --no-startup-id xinput --disable "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"

into i3 config seems to work.

Vpie649
  • 101