Enable/disable touchpad

I managed to install Ubuntu 16.04 on my asus ux501 vw, but some of my shortcut are not working. I'm not looking to fix them all, but just one : the shortcut which allow me to enable or disable touchpad, so i can write long documents with working about the touchpad.

I tried to find it on google but I got nothing.

Can someone explain me how to fix that please? Thanks !

Solution 1:

I created this bash script from negusp's answer. It finds and toggles TouchPad device. You can configure a custom shortcut to it in system settings.

#!/bin/bash

read TPdevice <<< $( xinput | sed -nre '/TouchPad|Touchpad/s/.*id=([0-9]*).*/\1/p' )
state=$( xinput list-props "$TPdevice" | grep "Device Enabled" | grep -o "[01]$" )

if [ "$state" -eq '1' ];then
    xinput --disable "$TPdevice" && notify-send -i emblem-nowrite "Touchpad" "Disabled"
else
    xinput --enable "$TPdevice" && notify-send -i input-touchpad "Touchpad" "Enabled"
fi

I'm setting Ctrl+Shift+F9 for toggle touchpad enable and disable like this:

Update: You may need to make your script to executable with command chmod +x filename or input /bin/bash /filepath to Command field of Custom shortcut window.

Solution 2:

You want shortcut, but you can easily put 2 scripts on the desktop and execute them.

First, go to terminal. Type xinput. Output Example:

⎡ 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 

Find the Touchpad. In this example, the touchpad is listed as id=12

Create the first script with this:

#!/bin/bash
xinput enable 12

Save it and name it touchpadenable.sh, and in terminal, mark it as executable with:

chmod +x touchpadenable.sh

Do the exact same thing again, but rename the file as touchpaddisable.sh (or whatever), and instead of

xinput enable 12

Use the command

xinput disable 12

Save, mark as executable, and you should be able to run the scripts from the desktop. Note: you may have to right-click the scripts, click properties, and allow it to be executed.

Solution 3:

You must to do like negusp's answer, first check your touch device, and will shows something like this:

~$ xinput
⎡ Virtual core pointer                      id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ PixArt Dell MS116 USB Optical Mouse       id=10   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad                id=14   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ DLLC6B2:00 06CB:75BF 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)]
    ↳ Integrated_Webcam_HD                      id=11   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard              id=13   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Dell WMI hotkeys                          id=15   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ DELL Wireless hotkeys                     id=16   [slave  keyboard (3)]

In my case is the device with id=12, now create a bash script with name "toggle-touch" in you Desktop folder under a folder named "bin", would be "~/Desktop/bin" and copy next code, check the device variable is pointed to my touch id=12, fix it with your case:

#!/bin/bash

device=12
state=`xinput list-props "$device" | grep "Device Enabled" | grep -o "[01]$"`

if [ $state == '1' ];then
  xinput --disable $device
else
  xinput --enable $device
fi

Set to this script execution permission:

chmod 775 /Desktop/bin/toggle-touch

Finally you can add this path to the ".bashrc" from your home folder, just add this line to the end of file:

PATH=$PATH:~/Desktop/bin

update the path with:

. .bashrc

Then you can execute this script from any place, I hope this help.