How to disable the touchpad?

I want my touchpad to be disabled when I use my mouse. How can I do that? touchpad-indicator has stopped working on 11.10. It used to work on 11.04. Gnome3 is not a solution as I don't like it and find it buggy.

Solution 1:

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)

Solution 2:

1. Search for mouse
2. Click on Mouse and Touchpad
3. Click off/on button to the right of touchpad settings.