Disabling touch screen only temporarily

Question

My touchscreen is cracked, so the pointer continuously clicks on the cracked area. That prevents me from using the computer normally.

I have tried the xinput disable 'ELAN Touchscreen' command, and even the one specific to the input number (though it should make no difference), yet whenever I do this, touch is re-enabled after only a few seconds.

Is there some way to disable the screen permanently until I decide to turn it on again (when I finally go to fix it)?

Solution

To first find the id of the device use:

xinput -list

From there find the name of the touch screen and then run:

xinput disable DEVICE

where DEVICE is the device name enclosed in quotes or its id.

Comments

[Sylvain Pineau]

Welcome to Ask Ubuntu. Please, could you put some of your time to read What should I do when someone answers my question?

[Kamil Dziedzic]

And how to enable it back?

[cornflakes24]

@KamilDziedzic use the same command, just replace unbind with bind

[Kamil Dziedzic]

If it would be so easy then I wouldn't ask :) The problem is that this doesn't work for me. It looks like usb device was bind again but touchscreen doesn't work.

[cornflakes24]

Hmm, that is how it works for me (I have a touch screen). Did you read through the article I linked to above?

[Mads Skjern]

How does one tell the USB ID of the touchscreen?

[Mads Skjern]

My menu looks quite different in dconf-editor, and there is even no settings-daemon, and I can't find these settings elsewhere in the menu.

[Sylvain Pineau]

@MadsSkjern: Try dconf dump / | grep -C6 touch to find the touch properties

[Shanteva]

@SylvainPineau The touchscreen only has one setting for orientation-lock

[Aryeh Beitz]

how to reinable?

[rubo77]

You can add an alias with alias disable-touchscreen="xinput disable \`xinput --list | grep -i 'touch ' | sed 's/id=//g' | cut -f2\`" enable it with the comand xinput enable DEVICE

[Peter Hall]

On Ubuntu 21.04, this enables a magic mode where the operating system crashes instantly the next time you touch the screen.