Touchpad Blocker: Disable touch-pad while typing
touchpad-blocker.com
touchpad-blocker.com
Commonly on large touchpads, left click is a one-finger tap, while right click is a two-finger tap, either of them taking place anywhere on the surface.
My impression is that dedicated click regions are going out of fashion.
For me that's no inconvenience - I click from the bottom of the touchpad, so I'd be performing an actual click anyway. I guess some people tap near the top?
Granted, I configured the trackpad so it handles taps like clicks. Quick swipes quite often get misidentified as taps instead.
Fuck me for daring to violate the One Apple Way(tm) I guess?
On these other OSs, the Mac trackpad is not much better than any other.
Don't get me wrong, the trackpad hardware is far better IMO but the experience of using it is really only great on macOS.
> better experience than using Linux/Gnome on for example a Surface Pro 8 touchpad
Sure, when you compare the absolute best with one of the worst, there will be a clear difference. Still, note that you made the point yourself about tweaking - which is done in software.
> There is a clear difference in just the hardware, not just software.
I agree. In fact, I said so. :)
Makes it kind of difficult to play certain strategy games and using 3d/animation software when you want to be able to pan with the keyboard at the same time as you're selecting/moving the mouse around.
My problem with Gnome (on Ubuntu 22.04 at least) is I can't set it to disable the touchpad if an external mouse is plunged in. WHY?! There seem to be some Gnome extensions for that but they never worked for me most likely since I'm on Wayland. Such a basic setting should be available by default, or at least through a cfg file.
I guess such a setting is not necessary because my workflow is different than the ones the Gnome devs want me to have. I must be holding it wrong. /s
You might not want to complain about customizability in gnome if you have ever used Windows before, they are on two whole different levels. That `gsettings` even is available is a godsend compared to Windows and macOS.
Funny that you mention this, but as a long time Windows and Linux user, I find Windows far more configurable (for what I need) out of the box than what vanilla Gnome offers, especially via what the GUI offers in the settings menu. I'm more of an KDE/XFCE man myself due to the available configuration options out of the box and no need for hacky extensions.
And if more configurations are needed on Windows, there's always a free easy to use GUI app (like the one featured in this topic) that can be downloaded and it's nearly guaranteed to work despite its age, because unlike Gnome/Linux, Microsoft don't change the APIs/ABIs every six months and break existing apps/extensions. And that's without going into the "this works on X11 but not on Wayland" rabbithole.
So you see my good sir, having experienced both sides, I will complain as I see fit about the things that annoy me.
But thank you for your suggestion, I'll give it a try.
Ah, that's great to hear. I'm very happy about this.
Could you maybe assist me in finding the configuration/a free GUI utility for doing what I mentioned in my previous comment? I've been looking for weeks without being able to find anything that can do what I want. Namely, I want to be able to type on the keyboard at the same time as I can move the cursor and click on the touchpad.
Have you tried tinkering with the touchpad sensitivity setting? Mine is set to medium.
https://www.intowindows.com/how-to-disable-touchpad-while-ty...
> haven't found a way of disabling it in Windows 11. On gnome I can disable that functionality easily, so it doesn't seem to be a hardware thing in the keyboard/touchpad
The article you linked seems to be about Windows 10, not 11. And even so, no dice following it's advice neither.
Yeah but maybe the Windows drivers for Surface touchpads mess with that setting or touchpad behavior in ways they don't on non-Microsoft touchpads. Knowing Microsoft I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. I would just stay clear form most Surface devices as they're Microsoft's attempt of copying the worst parts from Apple without any of the good ones.
>The article you linked seems to be about Windows 10, not 11.
Yeah but the touchpad settings dialogue is the same in both, I assumed you'd be tech savvy enough to not get hung up on this difference. Hit the windows key, start typing "touchpad" and as you do, "Touchpad settings" should be highlighted, hit enter, go to Taps, and play with the sensitivity setting.
>And even so, no dice following it's advice neither.
I mean I don't know what to tell you. I know that "it works on my machine" is the most cliché meme in the tech world, and not a helpful answer, but I only have one machine to test on and since it works out of the box on this one whiteout me having to dick with it to get it to work, I can't really reproduce your issue. Have you tried asking on subreddit for microsfot or surface devices?
by following this thought:
> there's always a free easy to use GUI app (like the one featured in this topic) that can be downloaded and it's nearly guaranteed to work despite its age
im not saying this tool contains malware, im saying, if it's a system function, the system should allow you to configure it. and no, i dont see missing widgets in open source settings panels as the problem since you could easily compile a better settings panel for yourself
There are a million other ways you can get malware, including via Gnome extensions. Do you think all the Linux tutorials online that involve the user cURL-ing or wget-ing something and running it as sudo are 100% safe? Then you should not use a PC or an internet connected devices if that's your threat model and do poweruser things without understating fully the risk of what you're doing with sudo/admin privs.
Regarding malware on windows apps, that might have been the case during the days of Windows XP but chances of niche Windows apps infecting you is infinitely small these days as windows anti malware is excelent at protection and malware actors have bigger fish to fry like email phishing or targeting mainstream apps that get millions of clicks like VLC or OBS form scummy Google-Ads , not some niche apps that disable the touchpad and get 5 downloads a year.
And yes I agree and that's my issue here. Basic settings like turning off the touchpad when an external mouse is plugged in should be a OS provided setting, not be poweruser setting/feature needing workarounds and external downloads with sudo/admin that open attack surfaces on your OS.
>i dont see missing widgets in open source settings panels as the problem since you could easily compile a better settings panel for yourself
The thing is, I don't want to compile anything for my OS. I used to, as a tinkerer/student, but now as a grumpy grown-up with responsibilities, I have work to do and my free time is precious and want to use it for other hobbies.
The OS for me is a tool, not a tinkering hobby project, and needs to do what I need it to do the easy way not the hard way, and I'm willing to pay for it if paid solutions exist.
I'm sorry if my POV clashes with the FOSS philosophy.
> Basic settings [...] should not be poweruser setting/feature needing workarounds and external downloads
yes.
> windows anti malware is excelent at protection
it can only be as good as its heuristics. generally speaking: antivirus is snake oil. i think instead of wasting more and more processing on detecting malware the user downloaded, users should be taught to use their machines properly. you dont expect a child to drive a car, and yet even more complex footguns seem fair game. and a child could easily do alot of (financial) damage with a computer.
> I don't want to compile anything for my OS.
that's fair. i wrote "you could". i mostly meant the capability. the actual work could be and usually is delegated to trustworthy users. (read "trustworthy" either from your pov or of the dev of the original application, if that person already is... uh... malwaring you, all this is moot of course. (also assuming a "good" dev who checks pull requests))
I'm still not sure if I prefer large touchpads or smaller ones because of this. You run out of space more easily with a smaller one, but there's fewer accidents. (And more places to rest your thumbs.)
Same here. Aggravating. Even if the Mac just made a tiny noise when it thinks this might have happened, it would be a great help.
I remember years ago I used to always disable the touchpad on my laptops, but I've been all Apple since around 2012 so hadn't thought about that until I saw this article.
Thankfully I don't use it much nowadays, but there could be people with borked touchpads too.
Those machines don't have dedicated mouse buttons for the trackpoint and use the trackpad instead. For some reason the mouse clicks became unreliable every so often, registering presses on the wrong side or straight up moving my mouse cursor to the edge of the screen - even if it was disabled in the BIOS.
The issue was persistent across operating systems, so I returned the machine and got an X250 with dedicated buttons.
I absolutely hate the T440 touchpad. Lenovo had the almost perfect design for that time with the T430: just make it bigger and out of glass, with physical buttons on the top. But no, "let's f** everything up", said some shitty designer.
My current one, a 2023 14 inch pro, does have a jumbopad but they must have done something because I'm not experiencing it on this one.