Disable Synaptics Touchpad While Typing in Ubuntu

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For many of us, our laptop touchpads get in the way of our typing quite often and can actually cause us to highlight or minimize things we didn't intend. So, this will help to alleviate that by making a small delay in the response of the touchpad after typing.

Open a Terminal from Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal

Type sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf_synbackup

Type gksudo /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Enter your password if it prompts you.

Search for a section that looks like the following

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
...
End Section

Add a line above the End Section line and put this into it:

Option "SHMConfig" "on"

Save the file and close gedit and the terminal window

Now you need to restart your desktop GUI using Ctrl-Alt-Backspace

Add the Startup Command

Open the sessions manager: System -> Preferences -> Sessions

Click the far right tab labeled Startup Programs

Click the Add button

Type in the following: syndaemon -i 1 -d

Hit ok then hit close

You can restart Gnome with the Ctrl-Alt-Backspace

To disable the touchpad completely, open your xorg.conf, and comment out or remove the line that says

InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad"

in the "ServerLayout" section (it's near the bottom).

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4 Responses

  1. coca says:

    a feature i was searching for a long time, tks
    just one remark why not use ”
    copy/paste doesn’t work

  2. Lifeform says:

    Thanx, great trick I know from long ago. But after installing feisty it doesn’t seem to work, as syndaemon can’t access shared memory regardless of SHMConfig option on. What may be the issue? Any help is greatly appreciated.

    Here’s my Input device part of Xorg.conf
    Section “InputDevice”
    Driver “wacom”
    Identifier “eraser”
    Option “Device” “/dev/input/wacom”
    Option “Type” “eraser”
    Option “ForceDevice” “ISDV4” # Tablet PC ONLY
    Option “SHMConfig” “on”
    EndSection

  3. tuos says:

    Option "SHMConfig" "true" NOT “on”

  4. Minor typo fix. The line:
    Type gksudo /etc/X11/xorg.conf

    Probably should be:
    Type gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

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