Ashok Gelal

Disable Accidental Touchpad Tapping While Typing

April 8, 2008

Often when you are typing, your thumb touches the touchpad and the typing start from another position. Follow these steps to disable accidental touchpad tapping:

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  1. Enable SHMConfig in your xorg.conf file. Press Alt+F2. It will bring you the Run Application dialog box.

  2. Type following and hit enter: gksu gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

  3. It will ask you for your super user password. Give it!

  4. xorg.conf should open in gedit file editor

  5. Look for following lines: Section “InputDevice” Identifier “Synaptics Touchpad”… … EndSection

  6. Add the following line just before the line EndSection Option “SHMConfig” “true”

  7. Save the file

  8. Open a Terminal

  9. Type the following command syndaemon -d -t -i 5 -d runs the command in background -t disables only tapping and scrolling but not mouse movements -i sets the idle time in seconds after the last key has been pressed. The default is 2 seconds. I was convenient with 5 secs. It means if I don’t press any key for 5 secs, the touchpad will be enabled.

Now to run make the command as a startup command follow the following steps:

  1. Go to System>Preference>Sessions

  2. Click on Add button.

  3. Fill up the following data in the dialog box that appears: Name: { Name of the command such as: Disable Touchpad } Command: syndaemon -d -t -i 5 Comment: { Any comments such as: Disables touchpad’s tapping functionality while typing }

  4. Click on OK and Close the Sessions dialog box

Enjoy tapping less typing ;–)

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By day, I ship code at MetaGeek, by night, I hack on my personal projects, and finally, when I get some off time in between, I also serve as a CTO for ClockworkEngine, LLC where so far we have launched two products - Spyglass and LightPaper. Call be a serial coder if you want.