The key to disable the touchpad Every now and then I manage to disable the touchpad on this laptop without knowing how, and then I’m looking for a way to enable it again, without knowing how. I checked my blog. I double tapped in all the corners. Tried all the fn + function key combos.
The key to disable the touchpad
Since you’re reading this blog post you know I found a solution. I’m writing this blog post to remind myself of the correct solution – and to remember some of the interesting comments I received on the fediverse.
@cadadr said:
If it happens again, and if you can access a terminal, you can use something like `dconf dump / | grep -C 3 touchpad` or `gsettings list-recursively | grep touch` to find a setting, and use the same tools to change values.
Alternatively, because most possibly you’re using the libinput driver, you could use `xinput` to toggle it on hardware level. `xinput` lists devices, find the touchpad id, then `xinput list-props | grep -i 'device enabled'`, get the property id (in parens), then `xinput set-prop <device-id> <prop-id> 1`.
Interesting!
As for the GUI route: I can open the Gnome Settings app, but I cannot switch to the section on the mouse and touchpad without a mouse or touchpad, I think. This is sad. When holding Alt, there’s exactly one label that has a shortcut defined. This is also sad. And the touchpad still doesn’t work, which is the saddest part of all. I’m going to reboot.
In the mean time, @im said:
After opening Gnome-settings, maybe you can type (search) “touchpad”, and then with tab navigating to the toogle you want to uh... toggle? I tried, it’s cumbersome, but I’ve managed to do it (with plain Gnome).
@encarsia confirmed:
Can confirm. Ctrl+F...arrows and space to navigate, Alt+← to get back.
Thank you all!
The reboot didn’t help, but after the reboot fn+F1 did the trick. How weird. I must have pressed that key a dozen times before rebooting. Oh well. All’s well again. 🙏
#Keyboard #Purism
