Synaptics TouchPad driver for X

Synaptics TouchPad driver for X.Org

This is a driver for all synaptics touchpads for X.Org. The driver is not written portably; it will not work on operating systems other than Linux and FreeBSD (by ports).

Features

• Movement with adjustable, non-linear acceleration and speed
• Button events through short touching of the touchpad
• Dragging through short touching and holding down the finger on the touchpad
• Middle and right button events on the upper and lower corner of the touchpad
• Vertical scrolling (button four and five events) through moving the finger on the right side of the touchpad
• Horizontal scrolling (button six and seven events) through moving the finger on the lower side of the touchpad
• Adjustable finger detection

Configuration using Gnome

Starting with Xorg 1.6 and Gnome 2.26, you can configure some of the touchpad features with gnome-mouse-properties.

Alternatively, you might want to use GPointing Device Settings as a graphical frontend, which allows configuration of both the TrackPoint and the TouchPad and is available for Fedora 12, Ubuntu 9.10 and Debian squeeze in the standard package repositories.

Configuration using xinput

This requires that you have at least Xorg 1.6 and have the xinput utility installed (part of the optional xorg-x11-apps rpm on Fedora) These settings are changed on the fly and will be lost when the X server is restarted

To query the available options

xinput list-props "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"

For instance to disable the touchpad (but not trackpoint) using xinput

xinput set-int-prop "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" "Synaptics Off" 8 1

Or alternatively to disable the TrackPoint

xinput set-int-prop "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" "Synaptics Guestmouse Off" 8 1

Configuration using xorg.conf

Some common options under X.Org

 ...
Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier      "Synaptics Touchpad"
	Driver		"synaptics"
	Option		"SendCoreEvents"   "true"
	Option		"Device"	   "/dev/psaux"
	Option		"Protocol"	   "auto-dev"
#       Option          "TouchpadOff" "1"               #Uncomment if you just want to disable the touchpad and use only the trackpoint
# 	Option		"HorizScrollDelta" "0"          #Why is this in here by default. By Gods, it kill horizontal scrolling!
	Option          "RightEdge"        "5500"       #This is a little bigger than the default narrowing the scroll region 
	Option          "BottomEdge"       "4500"       #This is a little bigger than the default narrowing the scroll region 
	Option          "RTCornerButton"   "0"          #disable Right Top corner "button" 
	Option          "RBCornerButton"   "0"          #disable Right Bottom corner "button"
        Option          "SHMConfig"         "on"        #this allows configuration of the touchpad using qsynaptics, synclient, or what have you. 
EndSection

To configure the touchpad on the fly, ksynaptics can be found under the KDE control panel. For Gnome users there is gsynaptics. And for those who prefer to remain non-partisan, there's also qsynaptics. They all provide a GUI way to control driver settings such as circular scrolling and tap to click.

For the console or scripting uses there is synclient.

Project Homepage

Synaptics TouchPad driver for XOrg