How do I disable the touchpad when the lid is twisted or closed?
I have Lenovo ThinkPad X230 Tablet with Ubuntu 16.04. It has a convertible screen and when it is in tablet mode the touchpad is still active and make a mess.
I've created the following script and bound it to one of the built in buttons (by a custom shortcut):
#!/bin/bash -e
# Find the TouchPad device ID
ID="$(xinput | grep -ioP 'touchpad.*id=\K[0-9]*')"
if [ "$(LANG=C xinput --list-props "$ID" | awk 'NR==2{print $4}')" == "0" ]; then
# If the device is disabled, then enable it and kill 'onboard' virtual keyboard
xinput enable "$ID"; killall onboard; xrandr -o normal
elif [ "$(LANG=C xinput --list-props "$ID" | awk 'NR==2{print $4}')" == "1" ]; then
# If the device is enabled, then disable it and run 'onboard' virtual keyboard
xinput disable "$ID"; nohup onboard >/dev/null 2>&1 &
fi
The script works properly, but this is a fake solution and yesterday I spent few hours to learn how to do that in a proper way. So I decided to share this experience here.
To check whether the device is in tablet mode or not we could read the value (0 or 1) of:
/sys/devices/platform/thinkpad_acpi/hotkey_tablet_mode
This value is switched by specific events. We can catch these events and could bind scripts to them by using acpid - Advanced Configuration and Power Interface event daemon.
1. Catch the events. Execute acpi_listen or netcat -U /var/run/acpid.socket, turn the lid in tablet mode, then turn it back. Here is an example output:
$ acpi_listen
video/tabletmode TBLT 0000008A 00000001
video/tabletmode TBLT 0000008A 00000000
Please note when the lid is close/open the result is different:
$ acpi_listen
button/lid LID close
button/lid LID open
2. Configure acpid to recognize the events triggered by the device mode change. Run the following lines into a terminal as (single) commands:
cat << EOF | sudo tee /etc/acpi/events/thinkpad-tablet-enabled
# /etc/acpi/events/thinkpad-tablet-enabled
# This is called when the lid is placed in tablet position on
# Lenovo ThinkPad X230 Tablet
event=video/tabletmode TBLT 0000008A 00000001
action=/etc/acpi/thinkpad-touchpad-twist-mode.sh 1
EOF
cat << EOF | sudo tee /etc/acpi/events/thinkpad-tablet-disabled
# /etc/acpi/events/thinkpad-tablet-disabled
# This is called when the lid is placed in normal position on
# Lenovo ThinkPad X230 Tablet
event=video/tabletmode TBLT 0000008A 00000000
action=/etc/acpi/thinkpad-touchpad-twist-mode.sh 0
EOF
The above commands will create the files:
/etc/acpi/events/thinkpad-tablet-enabled/etc/acpi/events/thinkpad-tablet-disabled
Note: The scripts for lid open/close aren't provided here. But they are similar as the above.
3. Restart acpid so it can re-read the event filters, including the ones you just added:
sudo systemctl restart acpid.service
4. Create the script /etc/acpi/thinkpad-touchpad-in-twist-mode.sh that will disable 1 and enable 0 the touchpad (&& make it executable):
cat << EOF | sudo tee /etc/acpi/thinkpad-touchpad-twist-mode.sh && sudo chmod +x /etc/acpi/thinkpad-touchpad-twist-mode.sh
#!/bin/sh
LANG=C # Ensure stable parsing
export DISPLAY="\$(w | awk 'NF > 7 && \$2 ~ /tty[0-9]+/ {print \$3; exit}' 2>/dev/null)" # Get and export the current user's \$DISPAY
export XAUTHORITY="/home/\$(w | awk 'NF > 7 && \$2 ~ /tty[0-9]+/ {print \$1; exit}' 2>/dev/null)/.Xauthority" # Get and export the currentuser's \$XAUTHORITY
ID="\$(xinput | grep -ioP 'touchpad.*id=\K[0-9]*')" # Find the TouchPad device ID
if [ "\${1}" -eq 0 ]; then xinput enable "\$ID" # Laptop mode or Lid is open
elif [ "\${1}" -eq 1 ]; then xinput disable "\$ID" # Tablet mode or Lid is closed
fi
EOF
- The script will parse and export the environment variables
$DISPAYand$XAUTHORITYof the current user's session, in order to allowroot(who runs theacpidprocess) to access the user's X session, respectivelyxinput. - Then the script will parse the
$IDof the touchpad. And depending on the value of the input variable$1it will enable or disable the touckpad.
Note: The backslashes before the dollar signs \$ are intended to escape the variable (command substitution) expansion within the cat command. So if you copy/paste the script (instead using of the cat approach) you should remove them manually.
References:
- ArchWiki:
acpid- Advanced Configuration and Power Interface event daemon. - Ask Ubuntu: How do I disable the touchpad while the lid is down?
- ThinkWiki: Installing Ubuntu 12.10 on Thinkpad Twist | Thinkpad-acpi | Wacom Tablet Stilus
- Ubuntu Forums: Touchpad ON/OFF | Why won't this acpi event work?
- About the parsing read: Programmatically find the current value of DISPLAY using
wandawkand Remove particular words from lines usinggrep -P '\K'.
using the answer of pa4080,
I had to make this change for it to work in Ubuntu 18.04 : hard code my user in the script and run the script in the context of my user.
file: /etc/acpi/events/thinkpad-lid-event
event=button/lid.*
action=su tim -c '/home/tim/scripts/lid.sh.post'
and lid.sh.post is
#! /bin/bash
# toggle touchpad enabled status when lid changes (lid closed,touchpad off)
# is run in user context
#
# example rule /etc/acpi/events/thinkpad-lid-close
# event=button/lid.*
# action=su tim -c '/home/tim/scripts/lid.sh.post'
#
# see https://askubuntu.com/questions/91534/disable-touchpad-while-the-lid-is-down
# and https://askubuntu.com/questions/980997/how-do-i-disable-the-touchpad-when-the-lid-is-twisted-or-closed/980999#980999
# this needs an event defined in /etc/acpi/events to call this script when lid status changes
# these variables need to be set to use xinput properly
export XAUTHORITY=`ls -1 /home/$USER/.Xauthority | head -n 1`
export DISPLAY=":`ls -1 /tmp/.X11-unix/ | sed -e s/^X//g | head -n 1`"
export TouchPadID=$(xinput | grep 'TouchPad' | sed -n "s/^.*id=\([[:digit:]]\+\).*$/\1/p")
grep -q closed /proc/acpi/button/lid/*/state
LidClosedResult=$?
xinput set-int-prop $TouchPadID "Device Enabled" 8 $LidClosedResult
if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then
echo "for user: $USER xinput device $TouchPadID enabled status changed to $LidClosedResult because of LID ACPI event" | systemd-cat
else
echo "failed to change xinput device $TouchPadID enabled status after LID ACPI event" | systemd-cat
fi
~