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How to enable touchpad tapping in xfce4.

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edbarx
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How to enable touchpad tapping in xfce4.

#1 Post by edbarx »

If you have just installed XFCE you probably have noticed that tapping is disabled and that you are left with using the touchpad's buttons. This can easily be rectified by editing a system file as follows.

The system file is:
/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf

cd to it and open the text file with the name 50-synaptics.conf and place the following text in it. Some text is already there: you most probably only need to add two lines. The text is the following:

Code: Select all

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "touchpad catchall"
        Driver "synaptics"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
        Option "TapButton1" "1"
        Option "RBCornerButton" "3"
EndSection
The last two lines before the "EndSection" do the trick. The first one enables tapping and the second one emulates a right button click when the touchpad's bottom-right corner is tapped. Allow some space if you also use your touchpad for scrolling.

Enjoy! :)
Last edited by edbarx on 2013-05-01 17:28, edited 1 time in total.
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dzz
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Location: Devon, England

Re: How to enable touchpad tapping in xfce4.

#2 Post by dzz »

Thanks edbarx, that's really useful information.. and works fine on my Lenovo (tested only in squeeze so far)

Other info on touchpad tapping mostly mentions editing xorg.conf (clunky and it probably doesn't even exist)

What I have been using before was this (as normal user) or in a startup script, which also works:

Code: Select all

synclient TapButton1=1 LBCornerButton=2 RBCornerButton=3 MaxTapTime=140 SingleTapTimeout=140 MaxDoubleTapTime=140
Does anyone know how the 50-synaptics.conf edit might affect a system that has no touchpad? I would like to use it as a "live-image" hook (same image is used on different machines)

This might affect not only XFCE, I don't know as it's the only "mainstream" desktop used here.

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manishthatte
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Re: How to enable touchpad tapping in xfce4.

#3 Post by manishthatte »

Now the double tapping works but i lost scrolling functionality.... :)

What do it do?
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manishthatte
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Re: How to enable touchpad tapping in xfce4.

#4 Post by manishthatte »

OK. I got it.

What I did was added the above lines plus downloaded a program gpointing-device-settings
and enabled the scrolling from it.

Now both works tapping and scrolling. :)
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mino
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Joined: 2018-11-02 16:54

Re: How to enable touchpad tapping in xfce4.

#5 Post by mino »

this works for me

apt install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

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debiman
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Re: How to enable touchpad tapping in xfce4.

#6 Post by debiman »

^ completely different problem.
edbarx wrote:The system file is:
/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf
isn't this file owned by the Xorg package?
shouldn't one use /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf or some such instead?

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Head_on_a_Stick
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Re: How to enable touchpad tapping in xfce4.

#7 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

debiman wrote:shouldn't one use /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf or some such instead?
/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-synaptics.conf wrote:# DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE, your distribution will likely overwrite
# it when updating. Copy (and rename) this file into
# /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d first.
;)
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kevinthefixer
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Re: How to enable touchpad tapping in xfce4.

#9 Post by kevinthefixer »

I installed the Synaptics touchpad driver on my Dell laptop even though it does not have a Synaptics touchpad, because it adds a tab in XFCE4's "Mouse and Touchpad Settings" dialog that contains a "tap to click" tickbox. It enabled tapping even on my Elantek touchpad.

andyprough
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Re: How to enable touchpad tapping in xfce4.

#10 Post by andyprough »

kevinthefixer wrote:I installed the Synaptics touchpad driver on my Dell laptop even though it does not have a Synaptics touchpad, because it adds a tab in XFCE4's "Mouse and Touchpad Settings" dialog that contains a "tap to click" tickbox. It enabled tapping even on my Elantek touchpad.
The same worked for me in Mate, and it added a Touchpad tab to the Mouse settings dialog that contains a "Enable mouse clicks with touchpad" tickbox. Using Elantech ETPS/2 touchpad.

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