How can I disable Elantech Touchpad while typing on Ubuntu 12.10?

Question

I have an Asus laptop (non zenbook) which I purchased last week. It has an Elantech Touchpad on it. Here's what's working:

Edge scrolling or Two Finger Scrolling.
Three finger and Two finger.
Left Click and Right Click and double tap.

The only thing keeping this from being perfect is that when I'm typing sometimes my palm hits the touchpad just right and then things get crazy. That can be a real bother when writing code.

Can someone help?

Here's the output of xinput list:

 Virtual core pointer                       id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad                  id=12   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                     id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard               id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                 id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Sleep Button                              id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ ASUS USB2.0 Webcam                        id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Asus WMI hotkeys                          id=10   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard              id=11   [slave  keyboard (3)]

output of: ps aux | grep syndaemon

jason 2911 0.0 0.0 20208 948 ? S Feb13 0:53 syndaemon -i 2.0 -K -R -t

jason 10256 0.0 0.0 13584 928 pts/2 S+ 14:18 0:00 grep syndaemon

There is a checkbox for that in the Mouse and Touchpad settings. Is it checked? — mikewhatever, Feb 14 '13 at 19:11
Let's see the output of `ps aux | grep syndaemon`. If possible, add it to the original question. — mikewhatever, Feb 14 '13 at 20:18
done. I added the output of ps aux | grep syndaemon as requested. — Jason Shultz, Feb 14 '13 at 21:20
Looks ok. Are you saying the feature doesn't work at all? What happens exactly, when you hit it 'just right'? — mikewhatever, Feb 14 '13 at 21:46
The feature doesn't work at all. So, for example, while I'm typing if I let my hand down it moves the mouse cursor around. If I'm typing, sometimes when my palm hits it, it'll jump the mouse up to another line and i'll be typing in a new location. That's what I meant by "just right" — Jason Shultz, Feb 14 '13 at 21:48
That's strange. I have an old Dell with an Elantech touchpad, and it 'disable while typing' works well. The mouse pointer should be movable because of the `-t` switch, but taps and scrolling should be disabled. What's the model of the laptop? Perhaps we can find something touchpad related. — mikewhatever, Feb 14 '13 at 23:11
I'm perplexed as well! :( It's an ASUS A55A-AH51. I bought it this month. :) — Jason Shultz, Feb 15 '13 at 14:05
For xubuntu, there are settings that do work: settings > mouse/touch > touchpad > [] disable when typing. Tested with 13.04 on Asus Zenbook (I know that the orig. poster has a non zenbook) — math, May 07 '13 at 18:03

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 24 '13 at 19:00

I know it's not what you really want (completely automatic?), but there is an easy to make keyboard shortcuts to disable and enable the touchpad.

From your xinput list, the id for your touchpad is 12. Use this command to disable it:

xinput set-prop 12 "Device Enabled" 0

Use this to enable it:

xinput set-prop 12 "Device Enabled" 1

Bind these commands to your custom shortcuts (Keyboard / Shortcuts / Custom Shortcuts). Perhaps this can be made to a script?

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 05 '13 at 16:04

Two ways I know for disable touchpad while typing. First the graphical way. Click on Dash and write : touchpad , then click "mouse and touchpad" to open and tick the box "Disable touchpad while typing"

enter image description here

The second (I think is the same) is the terminal way .. Open a terminal (CTRL+ALT+T) and write

syndaemon -i 2 -d

The number after -i indicates the seconds after the last key pressing for the touchpad to be working again. The -d option is for syndaemon to continue running in background (as daemon).

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 24 '13 at 09:42

Start synaptiks. I had a bit of problem with this as it sometimes fails to start. Try to start it again until you see the GUI dialog.

In the dialog you can set 'Automatically switch off touchpad on keyboard activity' and the 'Time to wait before switching the touchpad on again'.

You can also set 'Automatically switch off touchpad if a mouse is plugged'.

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 06 '18 at 09:49

0

I use this script I just did. Change the keyboard and mouse devices according to the output of xinput --list

kbidle () # disable ELAN touchpad while typing. By Zibri
{ 
    sleep 3;
    xinput test "ITE Tech. Inc. ITE Device(8910) Keyboard" | ( while true; do
        if read -t 1 a; then
            xinput disable "ELAN1200:00 04F3:3090 Mouse";
        else
            xinput enable "ELAN1200:00 04F3:3090 Mouse";
        fi;
    done )
}

answered Nov 06 '18 at 09:49

Zibri

711
8
8

there is a small bug though: if the mouse is set to autohide, the mouse pointer stays hidden... does anybody have a fix for this? – Zibri Nov 06 '18 at 09:56

How can I disable Elantech Touchpad while typing on Ubuntu 12.10?

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