Synaptic touchpad drivers linux

Introduction

A touchpad, and clickpad is a built-in input device for laptops that is used as a computer mouse. Synaptics is a driver for these.

Default clickpad gestures

• Single finger press on the top 80% of the clickpad surface = primary click
• Two finger press on the top 80% of the clickpad surface = secondary click
• Two finger movement vertically = scroll vertically
• Two finger movement horizontally = scroll horizontally

When clicking the bottom 20% clickpad buttons, one would want to use two fingers to maximize the accuracy of the click.

Basic Configuration with a Graphical Interface

Ubuntu provides basic configuration of your touchpad options in System > Preferences > Mouse, under the Touchpad tab.

Try the touchpad after unchecking the Enable mouse clicks with touchpad check box.

Check operation after Enable horizontal scrolling is checked. This may not have been the default setting.

Disabling Touchpad while Typing

• Go to System > Preferences > Mouse > Touchpad and uncheck ‘Disable touchpad while typing’ and ‘Enable mouse clicks with touchpad’. (This method is not available under Ubuntu 14.04.)

Completely disabling Touchpad

xinput set-prop 15 "Device Enabled" 0

You may run the command during session startup

Adjust Touchpad Sensitivity

Determine device number (see above)

Open a separate terminal to watch emitted events:

Replace [device number] with the number of your touchpad from ‘xinput list’. It will probably be one of the devices under «Virtual core pointer».

This step is not mandatory but it can help to track problems:

xinput --test [device number]

If text flies by as you move your mouse pointer using the touchpad, you know that you got the correct device number.

Open another terminal to see current settings: (Again this step can be omitted but is helpful to see available options. Watch for «Synaptics Finger». It will change as soon as you apply the next command.)

xinput --watch-props [device number]

xinput --set-prop [device number] "Synaptics Finger" 50 80 257

The terminal running ‘xinput —watch-props’ should now display

Property 'Synaptics Finger' changed. Synaptics Finger (267): 50, 80, 257

The higher you set the numbers the more force is needed to make an event fire. And the less sensitive the touchpad get.

Troubleshooting

Determine whether a touchpad has been detected

To check if a touchpad has been detected open a terminal and check the input device list given by this command:

If one of the lines mentions a touchpad or glidepoint (perhaps also «Synaptics» or «ALPS»), your touchpad has been detected.

If one of the lines mentions an «ADB mouse», then your touchpad is old. Use the trackpad command line tool to configure it. Here’s an example to switch on tapping and dragging:

sudo trackpad show sudo trackpad tap sudo trackpad drag

Enabling SHMConfig in order to get synclient debug output

Online, the most commonly found procedure for doing this involves using HAL. However, since HAL hasn’t been present in Ubuntu since 10.04, you will have to do it the other way — by editing xorg.conf.

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Paste this into the document:

Section "InputClass" Identifier "enable synaptics SHMConfig" MatchIsTouchpad "on" MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*" Option "SHMConfig" "on" EndSection

If it’s not empty, put it at the end. Save, close the file and reboot.

Now you should be able to see what kind of input your touchpad detects by running

The synclient manpage will explain what the numbers you see onscreen mean.

Touchpad not working after login

This usually happens when you disable your touchpad and then suspend your computer. To fix this just run this command:

gconftool-2 --set --type boolean /desktop/gnome/peripherals/touchpad/touchpad_enabled true

Control touchpad features using synclient

synclient is a commandline utility to query and modify Synaptics driver options. This would allow one to adjust touchpad features that may not be exposed via the GUI. One would adjust parameters via a terminal:

where PARAMETER is as listed below, and # is a number. While the formal definition of each parameter may be found in the synaptics manpage, here is a more user friendly description of each of the parameters:

LeftEdge RightEdge TopEdge BottomEdge FingerLow FingerHigh MaxTapTime MaxTapMove MaxDoubleTapTime SingleTapTimeout ClickTime EmulateMidButtonTime EmulateTwoFingerMinZ EmulateTwoFingerMinW VertScrollDelta - Controls the speed and direction of vertical scrolling. The fastest natural direction scroll speed is 1. Larger positive values decrease the scroll speed. The fastest reverse direction scroll speed is -1, with larger negative values decreasing the scroll speed. HorizScrollDelta - Controls the speed and direction of horizontal scrolling. The fastest natural direction scroll speed is 1. Larger positive values decrease the scroll speed. The fastest reverse direction scroll speed is -1, with larger negative values decrease the scroll speed. VertEdgeScroll - Enables=1/Disables=0 vertical scrolling when dragging across the right edge of the touchpad. HorizEdgeScroll - Enables=1/Disables=0 vertical scrolling when dragging across the right edge of the touchpad. CornerCoasting VertTwoFingerScroll - Enables=1/Disables=0 vertical scrolling when using two fingers anywhere on the touchpad. HorizTwoFingerScroll - Enables=1/Disables=0 horizontal scrolling when using two fingers anywhere on the touchpad. MinSpeed - Adjusts the minimum speed of your touchpad cursor. Lowest is 0. MaxSpeed - Adjusts the maximum speed of your touchpad cursor. Lowest is 0. AccelFactor - Adjust the rate of speed increment at which the touchpad cursor increases from MinSpeed to MaxSpeed. Lowest is 0. TouchpadOff - Enables=1/Disables=0 the touchpad entirely. LockedDrags LockedDragTimeout RTCornerButton - Disables=0 click when one taps the right top corner of the touchpad. RBCornerButton - Disables=0 click when one taps the right bottom corner of the touchpad. LTCornerButton - Disables=0 click when one taps the left top corner of the touchpad. LBCornerButton - Disables=0 click when one taps the left bottom corner of the touchpad. TapButton1 TapButton2 TapButton3 ClickFinger1 ClickFinger2 ClickFinger3 CircularScrolling CircScrollDelta CircScrollTrigger PalmDetect PalmMinWidth PalmMinZ CoastingSpeed CoastingFriction PressureMotionMinZ PressureMotionMaxZ PressureMotionMinFactor PressureMotionMaxFactor ResolutionDetect GrabEventDevice TapAndDragGesture AreaLeftEdge AreaRightEdge AreaTopEdge AreaBottomEdge HorizHysteresis VertHysteresis ClickPad

See also

Known Issues

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How can I install a Synaptics pointing driver?

I’m using Ubuntu 13.04, the latest version available from the Ubuntu website When I’m using windows 8, the touch pad works well with the installed synaptics pointing driver, handling all features like horizontal, vertical scroll as well as circle scrolling etc. But the problem is, In Ubuntu I only get vertical scrolling. Can anyone tell me how to install synaptics pointing driver for all such functions?

2 Answers 2

I had a similar problem. The way I corrected it was to install Synaptiks from the Ubuntu Software Center.

This gave me all the options which you are looking for.

If the touchpad is detected correctly, the synaptics driver shold be autoloaded. Check it with the following command:

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep -i synaptics 

A positive output would look something like this:

~$ cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep synaptics [ 32.848] (II) LoadModule: "synaptics" [ 32.849] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/synaptics_drv.so [ 33.096] (II) Module synaptics: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 33.097] (II) Using input driver 'synaptics' for 'ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad' [ 33.097] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/synaptics_drv.so [ 33.160] (II) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: ignoring touch events for semi-multitouch device [ 33.160] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: x-axis range 0 - 1152 [ 33.160] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: y-axis range 0 - 768 [ 33.160] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: pressure range 0 - 255 [ 33.160] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: finger width range 0 - 15 [ 33.160] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: buttons: left right double triple [ 33.160] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: Vendor 0x2 Product 0xe [ 33.161] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: touchpad found [ 33.189] (**) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: (accel) MinSpeed is now constant deceleration 2.5 [ 33.190] (**) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: MaxSpeed is now 1.75 [ 33.190] (**) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: AccelFactor is now 0.145 [ 33.192] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: touchpad found [ 18442.841] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: touchpad found 

If that’s what you get, try turning on horizontal scrolling with

synclient HorizEdgeScroll=1 

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