How can I disable touchpad while typing? On Ubuntu 16.04 syndaemon isn't working

You may have two touchpad drivers running, where syndaemon would then interact with the wrong one. I had the same issue on a Dell XPS 13, and this thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2316240) helped me.

If you also see two touchpad devices, try to disable one. As you have a different computer, the instructions in the link may or may not be literally applicable for you.

From the post referred to, the procedure is:

open the file /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/51-synaptics-quirks.conf as root with your text editor Insert the following text:

# Disable generic Synaptics device, as we're using
# "DLL0704:01 06CB:76AE Touchpad"
# Having multiple touchpad devices running confuses syndaemon
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"
      MatchProduct "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"
      MatchIsTouchpad "on"
      MatchOS "Linux"
      MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
      Option "Ignore" "on"
EndSection

Either reboot or restart Xorg with the command sudo systemctl restart lightdm Credit goes to ddarling from ubuntuforums.org.

Since january 2018, Dell has an official page in its Knowledge Base on Ubuntu Touchpad/Mouse Issues. The page describes this fix to disable the "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad", and also suggests to move to libinput rather than synaptics as the mousepad driver.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/atareao
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install touchpad-indicator

• Open touch pad indicator and click on the indicator icon.
• You can change preferences (in action tab) to "disable touch pad on typing"

Cheers!

i am using ubuntu 17.10 and tried different solution suggested here mostly does not work. specially touchpad-indicator software when starts in ubuntu 17.10 just disable touchpad and I could not find any way to re-enable it without restarting laptop. now I found this solution I think which still now working pretty well: just use this command,

synclient PalmDetect=1

This will at least prevent unnecessary tapping of palm on touchpad which in the end gives a better life.

In Ubuntu 19.04, I found it was adequate (for my needs) to simply disable the "Tap to Click" feature:

However, the consequence of this, is that you'll actually have to use the touchpad's buttons (hopefully you have buttons) to do your clicking. For me, that's a fair trade-off.

If you don't actual have "left and right" click-buttons (separated from your touch-pad) you can instead calibrate the sensitivity of your touchpad. I learned about this from Peter Hutterer, in this bug report.

I wish Laptop manufacturers, didn't make laptops with non-receded touchpads. These touchpads that are level with the keyboard's keys (instead of receded) are a design flaw.

Please let your laptop manufactures know the trouble they've caused you by this bad design, else they'll blindly keep doing this in future models.