How to stop the pointer jumping around due to the touchpad?

When searching for solutions to cursor jumping around, I found a lot of references to touchfreeze - a package that disables the touchpad while typing. But it is no longer part of any repository that I can find. All links to it are invalid.

How can I disable the touchpad while typing?

Solution 1:

You do not need a separate application to achieve that.

On 14.04

Simply run:

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.touchpad disable-while-typing true

or

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.touchpad disable-while-typing false

to either disable or enable touchpad while typing.

On 15.04+

You can use syndaemon in the background

To add syndaemon to startup applications:

Dash > Startup Applications > Add. Add the command:

/bin/bash -c "sleep 15 && syndaemon"

Explanation

The cleanest solution is to use:

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.touchpad disable-while-typing true

However, the key does not exist in versions, later than 14.04. I tested syndaemon on my 15.10 laptop, and it did the job perfectly.

Syndaemon has a number op options, of which the following seem the most important to me in your situation:

-i <idle-time>
    How many seconds to wait after the last key press before enabling the touchpad. (default is 2.0s). 
-m <poll-interval>
    How many milliseconds to wait between two polling intervals. If this value is too low, it will cause unnecessary wake-ups. If this value is too high, some key presses (press and release happen between two intervals) may not be noticed. This switch has no effect when running with -R. Default is 200ms. 

See also man syndaemon

Solution 2:

The package was removed after 10.04 (and 10.04 is no longer supported, which is why you can't find it in the repositories). From the publishing history on Launchpad:

Removal requested on 2010-07-28.
Deleted on 2010-07-28 by Jonathan Riddell
(From Debian) ROM; superior alternative exists, never in stable; Debian bug #587415

The Debian bug report mentioned says:

Please consider removing touchfreeze from Debian:

• kde-config-touchpad is far superior software with many improvements over touchfreeze

  • excellent KDE integration
  • far more feature-full
  • actively developed

• touchfreeze was never in a Debian release so far

Sp, perhaps you should look into this kde-config-touchpad, whatever that is, if it still exists.

Solution 3:

The other answers are excellent, but I'd just like to note that in the "Touchpad" pane of the settings screen for "Mouse and Touchpad" in 15.10, there's a tickbox that says "disable touchpad while typing" and which does what it says on the tin.

This is Cinnamon with a theme so Unity or other desktops will look different but I promise the button is in the same spot :)