20

The touchpad on my laptop is a poor design, because it doesn't recede down into its housing to avoid my thenar and hypothenar's proclivity for inadvertent tap-to-clicks.

In Ubuntu 19.10, using this same laptop, I was able to toggle off "Tap to Click", as shown here.

However, in Kubuntu 20.04, this option is grayed out (disabled), and cannot be Toggled:

enter image description here

Is there another way that I might disable Tap-to-Click, given that the GUI isn't offering the ability to toggle this setting?

cipricus
  • 1,386
  • 13
  • 42
Lonnie Best
  • 4,895
  • 6
  • 27
  • 42
  • 2
    [bug 420762](https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=420762) – Lonnie Best Apr 29 '20 at 17:24
  • I have the same issue. Dell XPS9360 running Kubuntu 20.04. I see you filed a bug on this [here](https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=420762). You added a comment to you bug report that there is a workaround but that just links back to this page where I do not see any mention of a workaround. Am I missing something? Thanks. – Rob O'Doherty May 03 '20 at 11:45
  • @rodoherty1 : No, you're not missing anything. I anticipated someone here would have provided a workaround quickly, but it hasn't happened yet. Sorry for the confusion; you can't edit bug comments at KDE. – Lonnie Best May 04 '20 at 03:51
  • Thanks @Lonniebiz. The only thoughts I can add are that the "Tap to Click" option appeared yesterday in my settings window. I had recently gone through the steps to set up multi-touch trackpad support as described [in this Ansible role](https://github.com/rodoherty1/bootstrap-my-linux-laptop/blob/master/roles/multi-touch-support/tasks/main.yml). The entire [Ansible playbook](https://github.com/rodoherty1/bootstrap-my-linux-laptop) is one that I use to quickly refresh my Ubuntu laptop. So I noticed that after multi-touch had been enabled, the "Tap to Click" option was enabled. :shrug: – Rob O'Doherty May 05 '20 at 07:46
  • @rodoherty1 Now, [my Tap-to-click](https://i.stack.imgur.com/R0Vqt.png) is also enabled. The only thing I've done lately is regular system updates. As you can see, some things are still "shown but disabled", but they're not any things I'm accustom to having anyway. Perhaps this is KDE's way of giving a sneak preview of things to come? – Lonnie Best May 05 '20 at 12:34
  • The reason all those other features are disabled, is because they are all sub-features dependent on Tap-to-click being enabled. If you enable Tap-to-Click, those features too can be toggled. - [Source](https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=420762#c3) – Lonnie Best May 07 '20 at 17:13
  • I think there's a misunderstanding here. Tap-to-Click can't be enabled. The checkbox is disabled. So, those other features aren't relevant until the first checkbox can be enabled. The bug thread just says it _became_ enabled, but never explains how. It's not due to recent updates. My system has all the most recent updates and the checkbox is not enabled. – Vince Oct 07 '20 at 01:09
  • 2
    @Vince I just took a look at my Tap-to-click settings, and I too was unable to toggle that check box due to it being disabled. I enabled the ability to toggle it in an unusual way. Basically, I click the "Default" button on the bottom-left, but I did NOT apply it. Instead, I exited out of the Touchpad settings window. Upon doing that it ask me if I wanted to save the changes I made, and clicked "Discard". After that, I went back into the touchpad settings again (from a freshly launched window) and for some reason the "Tap-to-click" became toggleable. – Lonnie Best Oct 07 '20 at 04:12
  • 1
    See [comment 5](https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=420762#c5). @Vince – Lonnie Best Oct 07 '20 at 04:36

4 Answers4

14

Referance: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1179275/enable-tap-to-click-kubuntu

I had to add Option "Tapping" "True" to the entry MatchIsTouchpad in the file /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/40-libinput.conf. The exact name of the file might be different for other people.

In the end, the relevant section will look like something like this:

Section "InputClass"

        Identifier "libinput touchpad catchall"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
        Option "Tapping" "True"
        MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
        Driver "libinput"
EndSection

You need to be root to edit the file and reboot your system after the changes!

AdminBee
  • 21,637
  • 21
  • 47
  • 71
Dimutha
  • 141
  • 1
  • 3
12

I had this same issue on a Razer Blade 15 (mid-2021) running Kubuntu 20.04 LTS.

The fix for me was to install the synaptics touchpad driver.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

Reboot

Reu
  • 121
  • 1
  • 4
  • For Ubuntu based distributions the right answer. In KDE Neon (22.04LTS) it activates tap-to-click by default and the Touchpad settings page is totally renewed with many more settings. – ñull Dec 15 '22 at 12:55
4

Currently, June 2022, using Arch Linux with KDE/Plasma desktop environment, to solve the issue simply install the generic driver for X.Org, based on libinput, and reboot the system:

sudo pacman -S xf86-input-libinput

Or the specific Synaptics driver:

sudo pacman -S xf86-input-synaptics

EDIT: On october 2022 I've realized that the above did not work anymore on Arch Linux with KDE/Plasma. Consider also that xf86-input-synaptics is no longer actively updated (See https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Touchpad_Synaptics) and it is advised to use libinput instead.

Installing both the libinput and the libinput-gestures (this is from AUR) packages on Arch Linux, definetely solved the issue:

Install the former with:

sudo pacman -S libinput

and the latter with an AUR helper:

yay -S libinput-gestures
wiredolphin
  • 151
  • 3
2

My reputation does not allow me to comment to the answer by @Dimutha, so posting as an answer:

follow the instructions from this answer, but use

        Option "Tapping" "on"

i.e., use "on" instead of "True".

I'm running plasmashell 5.24.6, KDE Framework 5.92.0, Ubuntu 22.04.

Nielius
  • 21
  • 1