synaptics touchpadd drivers for 16.04

Solution 1:

This is just from my experience, but sometimes my wrist will accidentally touch the pad and cause the mouse to jump. If that's not what you meant, you could try this page to see if the suggestions help. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SynapticsTouchpad

You can adjust the settings to disable the pad while typing.

Go to System > Preferences > Mouse > Touchpad and uncheck 'Disable touchpad while typing' and 'Enable mouse clicks with touchpad'. (This method is not available under Ubuntu 14.04.)

Maybe adjust the sensitivity or see if the page above helps at all. Sorry if that's not much help.

You could also make sure you have the synaptics package, which you should, but just in case. Open a terminal (CTRL+ALT+T or from the menu) and enter:

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

Solution 2:

If you have a modern Dell laptop, these instructions may help. They are directly from Dell, Precision / XPS: Ubuntu General Touchpad/Mouse Issue Fix. The issue seems to be that Synaptics drivers override Dell's. You need to disable Synaptics.

The first portion did wonders for me. Here is the script that they suggest adding to sudo gedit /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/51-synaptics-quirks.conf. I do not recommend following the accepted answer's solutions as that route seems to create other problems.

# 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

For compatability comparison, I've a Dell Inspiron 13 7000 series with xinput list

jonathan@Dell:~$ xinput list
⎡ Virtual core pointer                      id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Logitech USB Receiver                     id=10   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Logitech USB Receiver                     id=11   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ ELAN Touchscreen                          id=13   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ DELL0741:00 06CB:7E7E Touchpad            id=14   [slave  pointer  (2)]
...

Synaptics is not on that list because it has been disabled by the above script. Before adding this script, I suggest running xinput --test <id>" (for me 14). If you get output on a terminal, that means your device is working (your device is "on").