Quickly Enable/Disable Laptop Touchpad with Touchpad-Indicator in Ubuntu 10.10

This post was written by admin on November 27, 2010
Posted Under: General

Touchpad-Indicator is a small indicator provides quickly enable and disable touchpad functionality in Ubuntu laptop and netbook. It is written by Lorenzo Carbonell and only supported in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick now.

To install it, open up a terminal from Applications -> Accessories and run following three commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/atareao
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install touchpad-indicator

After installation, open the indicator from Applications -> Accessories -> Touchpad Indicator and set your touchpad in top-right via this icon:

worked great for a very new linux user here.

Thanks!

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Dave Reply:
May 8th, 2011 at 12:37 pm

Being able to disable the touchpad is great, the sensitive touchpad drove me nuts. Thanks!

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Written By dan on December 21st, 2010 @ 5:32 pm

Wonderful! Works in ubuntu 10.10 and Mint 10, AMD 64. Solved one of my biggest headaches…

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Written By Russ on December 29th, 2010 @ 11:28 am

Thanks! I love it! Like Dan said (#2), it solved the biggest annoyance I’ve had with Ubuntu lately.

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Written By James Roche on December 30th, 2010 @ 5:33 am

Thanks, worked perfect, Life long window user, but never going back there. Now if network manager would stop dropping connections all would be just perfect:) Thanks again.

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Written By Bob on January 1st, 2011 @ 5:43 am

Great Thanks! from Japan MacBookAir11′ with ubuntu10.10(32)

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Written By nagapon on January 15th, 2011 @ 11:55 pm

Hy, it works perfectly, but what command did you use to disable and enable the touchpad?

Thanks

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Written By Daniele on January 20th, 2011 @ 2:00 pm

Thank you very much for this…life saver…was about to take a knife to the thing and dig it out of my laptop!!!

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Written By jackie on January 29th, 2011 @ 3:33 pm

Thanks a lot! Works great!

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Written By Tim on March 5th, 2011 @ 10:58 am

Hi.. I am using ubuntu 9.10 and i need to enable the touchpad.. how to do it?? can any one help me…..??

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Written By yog on March 12th, 2011 @ 12:58 am

Thanks soo much ‘Lorenzo Carbonell’. This really solved my touchpad problem.

Bless you..

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#10

Written By Big Joe on March 20th, 2011 @ 9:29 am

i still have problem with my probook 4421s touchpad,i installed the touchpad indicator but nothing happen, right clik and left clik still not working…any suggestion???please send me email for the answer…thanks

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#11

Written By dody on April 27th, 2011 @ 12:12 pm

This is a terrific APP! This should be a standard part of Ubuntu distro. Not being able to shut off that mouse has been one of my major complaints with HP too!

Thanks ever so much.

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#12

Written By Ken on June 5th, 2011 @ 2:41 pm

works in 11.04

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#13

Written By TC on June 7th, 2011 @ 9:28 pm

running on 10.10 it works like charm! thanks

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#14

Written By winux on June 10th, 2011 @ 9:06 pm

Wonderful! Thankyou!

I have a bad touch pad that likes to ‘left-click’ at the worst times. This makes my life so much easier!

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#15

Written By Palanthas on July 19th, 2011 @ 4:46 pm

Thank you very much!

I was fighting with this problem.

Now, I am happy ^-^

This tip is very useful.

You are so kind!

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#16

Written By kelee on August 20th, 2011 @ 10:51 am

This works just great on 11.04 too and because I got all the updates I can disable when mouse is plugged in. I have not restarted since I installed, so I do not know if I will have to disable it every time I start, but even if I do thank you very, very much.

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#17

Written By Gregory on September 6th, 2011 @ 6:58 am

Hey.. it works perfectly. Thanks

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#18

Written By keshab on September 16th, 2011 @ 8:57 am

Touchpad indicator is broken in Oneiric Ocelot for whatever reason. This is driving me nuts. I’m about to go out and buy a shotgun and shoot my computer in the face.

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DjBacon Reply:
October 13th, 2011 at 1:35 pm

Yes, me too. I’m even considering going back to 11.04

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Tiago Reply:
October 15th, 2011 at 7:30 pm

me too!!! please someone fix it!

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abernau Reply:
October 31st, 2011 at 11:18 am

touchpad-indicator didn’t work for me so I had to change it and now works fine. I have laptop Dell Inspiron N7110 but I think you could do something
similar

1. from the list:

% xinput –list
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ PS/2 Generic Mouse 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)]
↳ Power Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Sleep Button id=9 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Laptop_Integrated_Webcam_HD id=10 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=11 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Dell WMI hotkeys id=13 [slave keyboard (3)]

2. choose your touchpad ‘name’. After 2 tries it occured in my case it was ‘PS/2 Generic Mouse’

3. Add the name from step 2 _IN_SMALL_LETTERS_ to file

/usr/share/touchpad-indicator/touchpad.py

at the (almost ) end of line:

TOUCHPADS = ['touchpad','glidepoint','fingersensingpad', 'ps/2 generic mouse']

4. restart touchpad-indicator and enjoy your life

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#19

Written By gary on October 10th, 2011 @ 6:35 am

problem with this is it disables everything (touchpad and pointing stick). the touchpad is the one causing me problems but the pointing stick is what i want to move the mouse pointer.

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#20

Written By someguy on October 20th, 2011 @ 4:06 am