After upgrade to Ubuntu 18.04 - Tap to click is not reliable anymore

touchpad 18.04 synaptics libinput tap-to-click

9,708

Solution 1

What ended up working for me was to remove the synaptics driver:

sudo apt remove xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

followed by a reboot. After that the touchpad worked again. I have a Dell XPS 15 9650.

Solution 2

Installing Touchpad Indicator worked for me!

Solution 3

Adjusting Mouse Settings

Sounds like you just need to do some custom configuring to your touchpad to increase the sensitivity FingerLow (minimum amount of pressure required to register a tap). This can be accomplished with synclient:

First check your settings:

$ synclient -l

Then you can adjust your FingerLow/FingerHigh (or other) settings:

$ synclient FingerLow=2

Once you figure out your correct settings you will need to put them in a startup script as the synclient options will be reset on reboot. You can see more options, get more info and learn how to make a configuration script with this Great Tutorial on Touchpad Options.

You can also use xinput to get info and tweak some settings per this Great Tutorial on Configuring HID Devices. Here is a quick summary:

First, find your device name and ID:

$ xinput --list

Look at the output to determine your device name or id number and list its available properties:

$ xinput --list-props ID

This will show you the available options you can set. Then you can set them like this:

$ xinput --set-prop ID 'prop name' VAL

9,708

user241281

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

user241281 over 1 year

I upgraded from Ubuntu 17.10 to 18.04 and realized tap to click is not reliable anymore. Approximately 40% of taps simply does nothing. Did you notice similar issues? Is it possible to fix this? (I use lenovo l450).

Edit: I use xorg session.
- Joshua Besneatte about 6 years
  
  is laptop-mode-tools installed?
- user241281 about 6 years
  
  laptop-mode-tools is not installed
glS almost 6 years

this doesn't work for me. Tapping doesn't work at all since upgrading to ubuntu and fiddling with synclient doesn't seem to fix it
user241281 almost 6 years

is not this because they switched from synaptics to libinput? will synclient work with libinput?
jdpipe over 5 years

synclient is not installed by default in 18.04, so this doesn't seem to be the preferred way of doing things any more...?
jdpipe over 5 years

Works for me, perhaps this tool should be included in Ubuntu...?
ada over 5 years

oh thanks! It also fixed touchpad disabling functionality!
makerj almost 5 years

It works like a charm. Tested on LG Gram 2-in-1 laptop with Ubuntu 18.04 unity desktop