Synaptic Touchpad

Synaptics has a rich heritage in capacitive touch sensing, dating back to 1995 and our launch of the first notebook PC TouchPad. Today touchpads are ubiquitous, and we continue to innovate and advance technologies that strive to perfect the user experience.

Synaptic Touchpad

The primary method of configuration for the touchpad is through an Xorg server configuration file. After installing xf86-input-synaptics, a default configuration file is located at /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-synaptics.conf. Users can copy this file to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ and edit it to configure the various driver options available. Refer to the synaptics(4) manual page for a complete list of available options. Machine-specific options can be discovered using #Synclient.

Circular scrolling is a feature that Synaptics offers which closely resembles the behaviour of iPods. Instead of (or additional to) scrolling horizontally or vertically, you can scroll circularly. Some users find this faster and more precise. To enable circular scrolling, add the following options to the touchpad device section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-synaptics.conf:

Ever more laptops have a special kind of touchpad which has a single mouse button as part of the tracking plate, instead of external buttons. For example, the 2015 Dell XPS 13, HP series 4500 ProBooks, ThinkPad X220 and X1 ThinkPad series have this kind of a touchpad. By default, the whole button area is detected as a left button, so right and middle-click functions and click + drag will not work. It is possible to define two and three finger clicks as right and middle button clicks, and/or to define parts of the click pad surface as right and middle buttons. Note that although the driver registers multiple touches, it does not track individual fingers (as of version 1.7.1) which results in confusing behavior when using physical buttons of a clickpad for drag-and-drop and other gestures: you have to click with two or three fingers but then only move one of them while holding the button down with another. You can look into the xf86-input-mtrackAUR driver for better multitouch support.

Some desktop environments (KDE and GNOME at least) define sane and useful default configurations for clickpads, providing a right button at the bottom right of the pad, recognising two and three-finger clicks anywhere on the pad as right and middle clicks, and providing configuration options to define two and three-finger taps as right and middle clicks. If your desktop does not do this, or if you want more control, you can modify the touchpad section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-synaptics.conf (or better, of your custom synaptics configuration file prefixed with a higher number). For example:

The above SoftButtonAreas option is commonly found in documentation or synaptics packages, and it defines the right half of the bottom 18% of the touchpad as a right button. There is no middle button defined. If you want to define a middle button remember one key piece of information from the manual; edge set to 0 extends to infinity in that direction.

If your buttons are not working, soft button areas are not changing, ensure you do not have a synaptics configuration file distributed by a package which is overriding your custom settings (i.e. some AUR packages distribute configurations prefixed with very high numbers).

If you are using a laptop computer and your touchpad does not work after switching the laptop's lid, you can just change your power management policy: when closing the lid, 'shutdown the screen' instead of 'suspend'(or 'hibernate'). This is useful for some laptops.

MATE will by default overwrite various options for your touchpad. This includes configurable features for which there is no graphical configuration within MATE's system control panel. This may cause it to appear that /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-synaptics.conf is not applied. Follow #MATE to prevent this behavior.

There also seems to be a problem with laptops which have both a touchscreen & a touchpad, such as the Dell XPS 12 or Dell XPS 13. To fix this, you can blacklist the i2c_hid driver, this does have the side-effect of disabling the touchscreen though.

In some cases, Synaptics touchpads only work partially. Features like two-finger scrolling or two-finger middle-click do not work even if properly enabled. This is probably related to the The touchpad is not working problem mentioned above. Fix is the same, prevent double module loading.

Another posibility is that you are experiencing IRQ losses related to the i8042 controller (this device handles the keyboard and the touchpad of many laptops), so you have two possibilities here:

You can enable/disable some special events that Firefox handles upon tapping or scrolling certain parts of your touchpad by editing the settings of those actions. Type about:config in your Firefox address bar. To alter options, double-click on the line in question.

Grabbing the event device means that no other user space or kernel space program sees the touchpad events. This is desirable if the X configuration file includes /dev/input/mice as an input device, but is undesirable if you want to monitor the device from user space.

The Synaptics TouchPad Driver download is software that lets the touchpad communicate with the firmware so that the motion on the pad translates into movement of the cursor. To get your Synaptics TouchPad working, you need to download this driver and adjust the settings as per your requirements. The software also lets you change the cursor size and sensitivity.

While Synaptics TouchPad drivers come pre-installed, sometimes these drivers get corrupted or are mistakenly deleted. Once you download Synaptics TouchPad Driver, your computer receives all of the latest updates needed to keep the touchpad working at an optimal level. Moreover, installing the driver also gives you access to the control panel and various additional settings.

To run and operate the Synaptics TouchPad, you should have the correct driver installed on your device. While the driver is pre-installed by default, sometimes it gets corrupted. When that happens, either the touchpad stops working properly or stops working altogether. In such a situation, you'll have to delete the existing Synaptics TouchPad Driver, download the latest version and enable it using the installation setup instructions.

Synaptics is a publicly owned San Jose, California-based developer of human interface (HMI) hardware and software, including touchpads for computer laptops; touch, display driver, and fingerprint biometrics technology for smartphones; and touch, video and far-field voice technology for smart home devices and automotives. Synaptics sells its products to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and display manufacturers.

In 1992, the company used the pattern recognition techniques it developed to build the world's first touchpad for laptop computers that allowed users to control the cursor and click with no additional mechanical buttons. The pad was a replacement for trackballs and mice used at the time.[4] By 1994, Twinhead and Epson America had adopted Synaptics' touchpad for their computers (Epson with the ActionNote),[6] followed by Apple in 1995[7] and later by other computer manufacturers, including Compaq and Dell.[8]

In 1999, Francis Lee took over as CEO.[2] The company had an initial public offering in 2002.[9] As adoption of the touchpad grew, Synaptics sought to integrate the technology with other products.[10] In 2004, Apple debuted the iPod Mini and fourth-generation iPod, both featuring a scrolling click wheel that used Synaptics' capacitive touch technology. Synaptics also provided a similar but vertical click wheel for the Creative Zen Touch portable media player.[11]

The company continues to develop laptop computer touchpads, fingerprint biometric technology for devices including cell phones, and other types of touch sensors and display drivers.[47] Synaptics has also developed sensors for multiple parameters, including temperature, magnetic, capacitive, and inductive sensors that can be integrated into devices such as video game controllers, wearable devices such as earbuds.[50]

Right click on the listing and select Update driver. When you get to browse my computer, you'll have the option to "let me choose" and then you select "usb input device" instead of "touchpad controller."

Instantly, all the buttons of the touchpad were working (with reversed functionality of course). So, at least, I could be sure it was not a hardware failure. This was great for diagnosis, but it was no long-term solution. So, I switched back to the standard right-hand-buttons.

After a short while, I noticed the buttons were both still working. Now with the desired right-hand-configuration. The touchpad continued to work even after restarting the computer multiple times.

After upgrading to Windows 10 or performing a Windows Update in Windows 10, if your Synaptics TouchPad will not scroll, you can tell it is caused by faulty touchpad drivers. To get it work again, follow below methods.

Everything else is working fine regarding Synaptics Touchpad, various tap actions, even a two finger scrolling, but I think I'll never get used to that. Everything seems fine, correct input driver 'synaptics' for 'SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad' is used and I've tried reinstalling it and what not. Nothing works except reverting to kernel 3.4.*.

You know, I really don't use edge scrolling. But looking over the synaptics man page, I don't see anything regarding the edge scrolling area. So it makes me think that maybe, your trackpad is simply configred too far to the right? Maybe set to be too wide, so the scroll area is pushed off the pad?

But looking over the synaptics man page, I don't see anything regarding the edge scrolling area. So it makes me think that maybe, your trackpad is simply configred too far to the right? Maybe set to be too wide, so the scroll area is pushed off the pad? 041b061a72