Synaptics Touchpad Too Sensitive

[Steve603]

Like the title says, even the slightest contact with the laptop touchpad causes pointer movement. I’ve made adjustments to the settings in Touchpad Management with very little effect so I’m hoping someone else has run into this and solved it.

Thanks,

Steve
OpenSuSE 13.1

[nrickert]

My solution was to plug in a USB mouse, and disable the touchpad. In KDE, I use “synaptiks” to automatically disable the touchpad if there’s a USB mouse.

I gather that the problem is mainly for people with some touch-typing ability (which includes me). They keep their fingers close to the keyboard while typing, and easily brush the touchpad surface. By contrast, “hunt and peck” typists tend to have their fingers well above the keyboard, so they have less difficulty with the touchpad.

[deano_ferrari]

@nrickert

My solution was to plug in a USB mouse, and disable the touchpad. In KDE, I use “synaptiks” to automatically disable the touchpad if there’s a USB mouse.

I gather that the problem is mainly for people with some touch-typing ability (which includes me). They keep their fingers close to the keyboard while typing, and easily brush the touchpad surface. By contrast, “hunt and peck” typists tend to have their fingers well above the keyboard, so they have less difficulty with the touchpad.

I definitely in the latter category

Further to this, synaptiks has a setting to ‘Automatically switch off touchpad on keyboard activity’. (I’ve never need it though.)

[Steve603]

Yeah, I don’t have a problem with touching the touchpad while typing, it’s that the touchpad is so sensitive that just the act of lifting my finger off it, if not done perfectly, causes some degree of movement. I was able to make some minor improvement tweaking the settings in Touchpad Management but it’s still very sensitive. It’s not a deal breaker and some research found methods to correct the condition in other distributions but they don’t seem to apply in OpenSuSE.

[lwfinger]

On 02/02/2014 07:16 AM, Steve603 wrote:
>
> Yeah, I don’t have a problem with touching the touchpad while typing,
> it’s that the touchpad is so sensitive that just the act of lifting my
> finger off it, if not done perfectly, causes some degree of movement. I
> was able to make some minor improvement tweaking the settings in
> Touchpad Management but it’s still very sensitive. It’s not a deal
> breaker and some research found methods to correct the condition in
> other distributions but they don’t seem to apply in OpenSuSE.

Any opptions that you need should go in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf.
On my computers, I cannot enable tapping as it always triggers at the wrong
time. To “fix” that, the Section “Input Class” gets an option line that says

Option "TouchpadOff" "2"

Use “man synaptics” to see the possible options.

[Steve603]

Thanks for the assistance. Using the FingerLow and FingerHigh settings in 50-synaptics.conf and tweaking the values I’ve made the touchpad much more friendly.

[deano_ferrari]

@Steve603

Thanks for the assistance. Using the FingerLow and FingerHigh settings in 50-synaptics.conf and tweaking the values I’ve made the touchpad much more friendly.

Good to know.