13/11/2023

Fixing disable touchpad while typing on laptop with Linux

I have stumbled upon this problem every time I’ve installed a new Linux distribution on my Lenovo laptop. The touchpad itself works fine, but annoyingly the disable while typing functionality doesn’t. This causes the cursor to constantly move about when typing on the keyboard.

Luckily, the fix is easy. It requires libinput library, which should, to my understanding, come preinstalled in most modern distros. If typing libinput to the terminal provides some sensible output, it’s installed.

The fix

First, type sudo libinput list-devices and look for the details of your keyboard.

Device:           ITE Tech. Inc. ITE Device(8296) Keyboard
Kernel:           /dev/input/event7
Group:            8
Seat:             seat0, default
Capabilities:     keyboard pointer
Tap-to-click:     n/a
Tap-and-drag:     n/a
Tap drag lock:    n/a
Left-handed:      n/a
Nat.scrolling:    disabled
Middle emulation: n/a
Calibration:      n/a
Scroll methods:   none
Click methods:    none
Disable-w-typing: n/a
Accel profiles:   n/a
Rotation:         n/a

Then, snatch the Kernel part of the output and check whether a query:

sudo libinput quirks list /dev/input/event7

… provides any output. The /dev/input/event7 part is from the Kernel part.

Nothing should come up.

Next, create a file for the libinput quirks called /etc/libinput/local-overrides.quirks, with the content of:

[Serial Keyboards]
MatchUdevType=keyboard
MatchName=ITE Tech. Inc. ITE Device(8296) Keyboard
AttrKeyboardIntegration=internal

Where the MatchName property is from the earlier libinput list-devices output.

Now, after a logout & login, disable touchpad while typing should work. Now, a quirks query should provide output:

sudo libinput quirks list /dev/input/event7
AttrKeyboardIntegration=internal