How to disable the touchpad?
Run the following command in a terminal:
xinput list
You will get an output that looks like this:
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics 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)]
↳ Power Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Sleep Button id=9 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Laptop_Integrated_Webcam_1.3M id=10 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=11 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Dell WMI hotkeys id=13 [slave keyboard (3)]
It displays all the input devices connected. Note that they all have an id. Since 12 is the id for my touchpad, running the following command will disable it.
xinput set-prop 12 "Device Enabled" 0
In Ubuntu versions >12.04 you can also directly disable via
xinput --disable 12
(and enable via a similar command)
- Search for mouse
- Click on Mouse and Touchpad
- Click off/on button to the right of touchpad settings.
check this link out: How to disable-enable touchpad in ubuntu 11.10
The answer found there is really neat:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/atareao
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install touchpad-indicator
After this you will get a switch in your notification area.
The only thing I would wish is to be able to set the switch key to Fn+F8 (which is a touchpad key switch on my keyboard...