When I'm typing in LibreOffice I keep accidentally bumping the trackpad. Is there a way I can temporarily disable the trackpad with a keyboard shortcut while I'm typing? (I understand there is an option to disable the mouse when typing but when I nudge the trackpad it gets back on anyway.)
Asked
Active
Viewed 284 times
1 Answers
1
Here is how to turn the touchpad off and on.
Run xinput from your terminal. When I do so, for my laptop, I see this:
$ xinput
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ PixArt USB Optical Mouse id=10 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ PS/2 Mouse id=13 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint id=12 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Video Bus id=6 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Sleep Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Integrated_Webcam_1.3M id=9 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=11 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Dell WMI hotkeys id=14 [slave keyboard (3)]
$
The trackpad here is AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint with a device id of 12. You'll need to figure out what is what on your system.
To disable this device within this particular current session, I'll run:
xinput --disable 12
To enable it, I'll run:
xinput --enable 12
But if I want to have code I can safely use even after a reboot I would use the device name itself.
So, one can use:
xinput --disable 'AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint'
and
xinput --enable 'AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint'
The single quotes are important!
How you actually make these keyboard shortcuts depends on the desktop environment you are using and what keys are free on your system for the purpose. You need to make sure they won't be needed for other purposes.
DK Bose
- 44,553