Disabling Synaptics Touchpad with Ubuntu 10.04

10.04 Disable Mouse Synaptic Technology Touchpad Troubleshooting Ubuntu

2010-06-04

I recently installed Ubuntu 10.04 on my Thinkpad T61 and set about disabling the touchpad, which I always find irritating. There seemed to be lots of guides to this, including this one, but none of them seemed to work for me. Eventually I figured some fairly simple steps which did work:

Install two packages if they aren’t already installed (gpointing-device-settings is the more modern version of gsynaptics and will uninstall it if it’s installed):
```
sudo aptitude install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics gpointing-device-settings
```
Start gpointing-device-settings from the command line and select “Touchpad off”, as shown here:

![]({{ site.blog_root }}/images/GPointing-Device-Settings_003.png)

Exit the tool and reboot.

Comments

I just want to add that you do not have to reboot, just switch from on to off.

— Pimping 2012-07-03 23:07

https://bitbucket.org/barseghyanartur/xinput_shortcuts It's a very tiny code which allows you to disable/enable the touchpad from terminal. Simply follow the Instructions below: 1) Download https://bitbucket.org/barseghyanartur/xinput_shortcuts/get/cae698b61e4c.zip 2) Unpack it somewhere. 3) Open terminal and go to the directory where you have unpacked it. 4) chmod +x install.sh 5) ./install.sh Now you can disable/enable touchpad by typing "disable_touchpad" or "enable_touchpad" commands in your terminal.

— Delusional Insanity 2012-04-27 08:31

Thanks to Anton found the easy way to disable the touchpad on my Acer. I tried Fn + F8 but found it was turning off the sound. I then looked at the function keys and saw the icons on them. The F7 is the one on this computer. After three years of using the computer I never even noticed the Fn key and the icons on the function keys, I should say I noticed them but never really paid attention to what was on them. This will now save my wife and daughter a lot of frustration as they rest their wrists on the touchpad and the cursor jumps away from where it should be... Thanks again.

— Rob 2011-03-01 01:16

Solved my problem: In my computer I enable/disable it just pressing Fn+F7. So, I did disable it using your solution, and then pressed Fn+F7, but I didn't notice that this fully disabled the touchpad. The solution has been just pressing Fn+F7 once again... X-)

— Fran 2011-01-10 15:29

Hello, I've disabled my touchpad on Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook following your instructions, and it works like a charm. The bad point is that now I cannot re-enable it again. I've tried setting it to On using gpointing-device-settings, but it didn't work :-???? I've tried uninstalling and purging gpointing-device-settings without success neither. Any ideas?

— Fran 2011-01-10 15:13

This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!!

— Xavi 2010-12-28 19:48

this works, but as anonymous commented on 28 jul 2010, the touchpad seems to re-enable itself after a minute or two. i tracked this to the GNOME mouse control panel where it says 'disable trackpad when typing'. disable that and the touchpad will stay off. i'm supposing that feature overrides the last state set by gpointing-device-settings. ;-)

— yossman 2010-09-26 04:06

Thank you! Worked great.

— Seth 2010-08-07 19:23

This doesn't seem to work. The touchpad will just enable itself a few minutes rebooting.

— 2010-07-28 15:46

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— CJ Travis » Ubuntu 10.04: Disable Thinkpad T500 (and other) Touchpads 2010-07-06 14:58

I take that back! Closed the terminal... Back to normal... lol... fired that one off a bit early on my part.. :o

— Randy Noseworthy 2010-06-28 21:55

Actually, I found that I didn't have to even reboot, and it worked well. Thanks! Also, on my Toshiba A-135, I tried to use an extented fn key combo, and couldn't find one. :(

— Randy Noseworthy 2010-06-28 21:49

Actually it wasn't on my T43p, but is on my W500, so it was new at some point though I have no idea when

— Anton Piatek 2010-06-05 16:44

Fair enough. I'd never even noticed that shortcut was there!

— andrewferrier 2010-06-04 08:42

I simply use Fn+F8 after startup to disable the trackpad - Sometimes I like to enable it for other people using it, and thats easy with Fn+F8 Of course I have to do this for every reboot, but thats only about twice a month :)

— Anton Piatek 2010-06-04 08:28