I have a touchscreen, but the drivers are not working properly and interfere with my mouse.

Is it possible to disable my touchscreen , so that I can work again properly?

1

7 Answers

You can try disabling the input device with the xinput command. First see what input devices you have, just type:

xinput

And you should see a list like:

$ xinput
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Atmel Atmel maXTouch Digitizer id=9 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint id=13 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad id=12 [slave pointer (2)]
...

Then you can disable the input device you want with this command:

xinput disable 9

Where 9 is the id of the device you want to disable. You can also use the device name between quotes.

In xinput version 1.5.99.1 , you need to do xinput set-prop 9 'Device Enabled' 0 instead. Oddly on xinput v1.6.2 the first way work.

10

The xinput solution did not work for me. I instead followed the instructions in this thread. This will disable it at boot time.

1. Edit /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf
2. Add Option "Ignore" "on" to the end of the section with the touchscreen identifier
3. Reboot

• For the record (Google), I have a Samsung Series 7 and my touch screen was listed as ELAN Touchscreen in xinput.
• JFTR too, in this question says the power consumption difference is mostly negligible.

11

Edit file the file with

sudo nano /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf

Change MatchIsTouchscreen from "on" to "off" in the Touchscreen section so it looks like this:

Section "InputClass" Identifier "evdev touchscreen catchall" MatchIsTouchscreen "off" MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*" Driver "evdev" EndSection

Save, Name and Exit

Touchscreen is disabled and no longer detected in xinput list.

5

In order to disable the touchscreen on Ubuntu 19.x and 20.x you can:

• Wait the login screen
• Press Alt+F2
• Edit the "libinput" configuration and disable the touchscreen section, like that:

sudo nano /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/40-libinput.conf 

# Match on all types of devices but joysticks
#
# If you want to configure your devices, do not copy this file.
# Instead, use a config snippet that contains something like this:
#
# Section "InputClass"
# Identifier "something or other"
# MatchDriver "libinput"
#
# MatchIsTouchpad "on"
# ... other Match directives ...
# Option "someoption" "value"
# EndSection
#
# This applies the option any libinput device also matched by the other
# directives. See the xorg.conf(5) man page for more info on
# matching devices.
Section "InputClass" Identifier "libinput pointer catchall" MatchIsPointer "on" MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*" Driver "libinput"
EndSection
Section "InputClass" Identifier "libinput keyboard catchall" MatchIsKeyboard "on" MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*" Driver "libinput"
EndSection
Section "InputClass" Identifier "libinput touchpad catchall" MatchIsTouchpad "on" MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*" Driver "libinput"
EndSection
#Section "InputClass" <----
# Identifier "libinput touchscreen catchall" <---- this one
# MatchIsTouchscreen "on" <---- put # in
# MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*" <---- front of
# Driver "libinput" <---- every line
#EndSection <----
Section "InputClass" Identifier "libinput tablet catchall" MatchIsTablet "on" MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*" Driver "libinput"
EndSection

My "Dell Inspiron" touchscreen was broken. The cursor moved all over the place and click in random places several times a second. I was unable even to make login on the gnome or even to access the bios.

As id for xinput changes on reboot, I added a simple one-line screen on session load:

#!/bin/bash
xinput --list | awk '/Atmel Atmel maXTouch Digitizer/ {print $7}' | awk '{split($0,a,"="); print a[2]}' | xargs xinput disable

My device's name is "Atmel Atmel maXTouch Digitizer", change that with your device (use xinput --list for device name).

If your touchscreen is a touch panel screen like a USB monitor, you can add default kernel driver usbtouchscreen into modprobe's blacklist file (/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf) and use your custom driver such as touchkit or evtouch.

As @romaia's answer here shows, xinput is indeed the right way to do it.

However, I like to write a script and attach calling this script to a Ctrl + Alt + P keyboard shortcut, to make this super easy. Now I get an auto-closing window like this when I use this shortcut the first time:

...and if I use the shortcut again:

Ah, beautiful! Now I can easily enable/disable my touchpad or touchscreen, and fix mouse scroll speed, all with a single easy-to-use keyboard shortcut!

Get the latest version of this script here: .

Here's a snapshot of it at this moment:

#!/bin/bash
# This file is part of eRCaGuy_dotfiles:
# toggle_touchpad.sh
# - toggle the touchpad & touchscreen on and off, and enable/disable imwheel to fix scroll speed when using a mouse
# instead of the touchpad
# Gabriel Staples
# Started: 2 Apr. 2018
# Update History (newest on TOP):
# 28 Jan. 2020 - added in lines to disable Touchscreen too, as well as show ID numbers of
# Touchscreen & Touchpad
# 22 June 2019 - added in the imwheel stuff to not mess up track pad scrolling when
# track pad is in use
# References (in order of progression):
# 1. negusp described xinput:
# 2. Almas Dusal does some fancy sed stuff & turns negusp's answer into a script:
# 3. I turn it into a beter script, attach it to a Ctrl + Alt + P shortcut, & do a zenity GUI popup window as well:
#
# 4. I add imwheel to my script to also fix Chrome mouse scroll wheel speed problem at the same time:
#
# 5. I put this script on Github, and posted a snapshot of it on this answer here:
#
# `xinput` search strings for these devices
# - Manually run `xinput` on your PC, look at the output, and adjust these search strings as necessary for your
# particular hardware and machine!
TOUCHPAD_STR="TouchPad"
TOUCHSCREEN_STR="Touchscreen"
read TouchpadId <<< $( xinput | sed -nre "/${TOUCHPAD_STR}/s/.*id=([0-9]*).*/\1/p" )
read TouchscreenId <<< $( xinput | sed -nre "/${TOUCHSCREEN_STR}/s/.*id=([0-9]*).*/\1/p" )
echo "TouchpadId = $TouchpadId" # Debug print
echo "TouchscreenId = $TouchscreenId" # Debug print
state=$( xinput list-props "$TouchpadId" | grep "Device Enabled" | grep -o "[01]$" )
PRINT_TEXT="Touchpad (ID $TouchpadId) &amp; Touchscreen (ID $TouchscreenId) "
if [ "$state" -eq '1' ];then imwheel -b "4 5" # helps mouse wheel scroll speed be better xinput --disable "$TouchpadId" xinput --disable "$TouchscreenId" zenity --info --text "${PRINT_TEXT} DISABLED" --timeout=2
else killall imwheel # helps track pad scrolling not be messed up by imwheel xinput --enable "$TouchpadId" xinput --enable "$TouchscreenId" zenity --info --text "${PRINT_TEXT} ENABLED" --timeout=2
fi

References (in order of progression):

1. negusp described xinput: Enable/disable touchpad
2. Almas Dusal does some fancy sed stuff & turns negusp's answer into a script: Enable/disable touchpad
3. I turn it into a beter script, attach it to a Ctrl + Alt + P shortcut, & do a zenity GUI popup window as well:Enable/disable touchpad
4. I add imwheel to my script to also fix Chrome mouse scroll wheel speed problem at the same time:Permanently fix Chrome scroll speed
5. I put this script on Github, and posted a snapshot of it on this answer here: How do I disable the touchscreen drivers?
6. Get the latest version of this script here!