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

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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~~ now supports Ubuntu 12.04, 11.10, 11.04, 10.10 and 10.04.

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:

38 users responded in " Quickly Enable/Disable Laptop Touchpad with Touchpad-Indicator in Ubuntu "

dan said, in December 21st, 2010 at 5:32 pm

worked great for a very new linux user here.

Thanks!

Russ said, in December 29th, 2010 at 11:28 am

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

James Roche said, in December 30th, 2010 at 5:33 am

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

Bob said, in January 1st, 2011 at 5:43 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.

Ubuntu - pomoc | Ubuntu 10.10 – Touchpad-Indicator – szybkie włączanie i wyłączanie touchpada said, in January 1st, 2011 at 4:03 pm

[…] nowy wpis i w polu Polecenie wpisz: /usr/share/touchpad-indicator/touchpad-indicator.py Źródło: ubuntuguide.net Podobne wpisyUbuntu 10.10: konfiguracja powiadomieńUbuntu 10.10 – instalacja krok po […]

nagapon said, in January 15th, 2011 at 11:55 pm

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

Daniele said, in January 20th, 2011 at 2:00 pm

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

Thanks

jackie said, in January 29th, 2011 at 3:33 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!!!

Touchpad-Indicator - отключи/включи тачпад на ноутбуке | PROUBUNTU said, in February 23rd, 2011 at 6:41 am

[…] Источник […]

Tim said, in March 5th, 2011 at 10:58 am

Thanks a lot! Works great!

yog said, in March 12th, 2011 at 12:58 am

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

Big Joe said, in March 20th, 2011 at 9:29 am

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

Bless you..

dody said, in April 27th, 2011 at 12:12 pm

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

Dave said, in May 8th, 2011 at 12:37 pm

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

Ken said, in June 5th, 2011 at 2:41 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.

TC said, in June 7th, 2011 at 9:28 pm

works in 11.04

winux said, in June 10th, 2011 at 9:06 pm

running on 10.10 it works like charm! thanks

Palanthas said, in July 19th, 2011 at 4:46 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!

kelee said, in August 20th, 2011 at 10:51 am

Thank you very much!

I was fighting with this problem.

Now, I am happy ^-^

This tip is very useful.

You are so kind!

Gregory said, in September 6th, 2011 at 6:58 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.

keshab said, in September 16th, 2011 at 8:57 am

Hey.. it works perfectly. Thanks 🙂

gary said, in October 10th, 2011 at 6:35 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.

DjBacon said, in October 13th, 2011 at 1:35 pm

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

Tiago said, in October 15th, 2011 at 7:30 pm

me too!!! please someone fix it!

someguy said, in October 20th, 2011 at 4:06 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.

Zajko said, in October 20th, 2011 at 7:23 am

Thanks for this!!! I had a big headache with the stupid touchpad!!!

abernau said, in 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 🙂

Antonio Nogueira said, in November 11th, 2011 at 10:38 am

Funcionou direitinho no meu Laptop Dell Inspiron 1545 usando o Ubuntu 11.10, 64bits, com o xfce. Muito bom. Valeu pela dica.

Rahul said, in November 20th, 2011 at 12:40 am

Thanks a lot, the physical touchpad disable buttion in acer Aspire 5542G doesnt work for Ubuntu. This app works just fine.currently on Ubuntu 11.10
.

Brad Goetsch said, in December 30th, 2011 at 8:36 am

Thanks! Worked perfectly with Mint 12. I should have done this a month ago, would have saved me some headaches.

Annuar said, in January 1st, 2012 at 9:09 pm

Great !!! Solved my problem and really appreciate. Many Thanks.

Sreenath said, in January 5th, 2012 at 12:41 am

can i download the software manually and install it in another system. the system i use doesnt have an internet connection.

mik said, in February 22nd, 2012 at 3:56 am

Great job. This needs to be in the current version of Ubuntu.

Martha Murillo said, in April 26th, 2012 at 1:26 pm

Works great! Thanx!

jao madn said, in June 14th, 2012 at 7:22 am

Works on my asus u30jc lucid 64bit

Enable/Disable Ubuntu Laptop Touchpad in Command Line said, in July 1st, 2012 at 8:00 pm

[…] Quickly Enable/Disable Laptop Touchpad with Touchpad-Indicator in Ubuntu […]

Robert Gendron said, in November 20th, 2012 at 5:57 pm

I can’t tell you how useful this is.

blackangelpr said, in February 5th, 2013 at 10:37 am

Great dont understand why now they do not have an option to disable it on settings or include this application ,,, very annoying when you try to type and the touch pad moves your cursor

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

38 users responded in " Quickly Enable/Disable Laptop Touchpad with Touchpad-Indicator in Ubuntu "

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