Disable Touchscreen Automatically on Boot in Bash

I have a touchscreen laptop that uses Ubuntu (HP Spectre X360). My screen has been replaced a couple of times and so there is a sometimes a problem with the touchscreen that makes it think that it is being touched randomly all over the screen. This makes it impossible to control anything and a reboot is required.

I know how to disable the touchscreen:

In the terminal I type xinput and I am presented with a list, e.g.:

I then find the number that corresponds to the ELAN Touchscreen (in this case 10) and then type:

xinput disable 10

Once the screen is going haywire however, it is too late to do this, as I can't type anything. So I want to automate this to be typed as soon as I boot my computer and disable the touchscreen automatically every time. But sometimes the number is not 10, it is sometimes 9.

I suppose I need some simple bash screen that inputs xinput but then finds the number that corresponds to the touchscreen and inputs xinput disable #.

Could anyone help me with that please?

2 Answers

I'm going to improve this answer for you a little.

Create a file called for example disable-touchscreen.sh in the /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/ folder with the following content.

#!/bin/sh
[ -x /usr/bin/xinput ] && /usr/bin/xinput disable 'ELAN Touchscreen'

Make sure it is executable (chmod +x /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/disable-touchscreen.sh).

You can use it this way, quoting man xinput:

device can be the device name as a string or the XID of the device.

If your distribution doesn't contain the /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/ folder (Ubuntu most likely doesn't), then create it.

Also take a look into your home, if there is a file named .xinitrc, ensure it contains a block like

# run all system xinitrc shell scripts.
for file in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/* ; do . $file
done

To permanently disable the touchscreen input, here is another method:

• Edit the file /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf

• Find the entry for the ELAN Touchscreen

• In "Driver" section, Change "evdev" to "libinput" so it would look like this:

   Driver "libinput"

  If you find in the file an entry for "Touchscreen catchall", add to it the line:

   Option "Ignore" "on"

  Another possibility is if you find this line: MatchIsTouchscreen "on", then change it to MatchIsTouchscreen "off".

• Save the file and reboot.

Another method uses the command:

xinput --set-prop 'name of touchpad device' 'Device Enabled' 0