How to alter touchpad settings on Ubuntu GNOME 16.04?

Question

After upgrading to Ubuntu GNOME 16.04 with GNOME 3.20 I have found that if I tap my touchpad it clicks which is something I do not want due to a faulty touchpad, previously I was able to disable this through the gnome-control-center, but seemingly there is no way to do this any more through there, so how do I do it? Also, even though it is set to false in gsettings and the dconf-editor seemingly for some reason somewhere in the system it is also set to true as it is behaving as such. I am also unable to set natural scrolling or any of the other touchpad settings seemingly, why not?

Solution

To be able to set these settings through Terminal or through the gnome-control-center you need to make sure that you have xserver-xorg-input-libinput installed. It appears to be a bug that it is not already installed by default, in order to install simply run:

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-libinput

After doing so and then logging out and in again you will find new settings in the gnome-control-center's Mouse & Touchpad settings:

You should now also be able to set the touchpad settings through the dconf-editor and gsettings in Terminal.

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Related: LP Bug #1586657

Comments

[Pilot6]

Please edit your question and add output of xinput terminal command.

[Admin]

@Pilot6: No need, I solved it!

[Pilot6]

This is not universal. With libinput tapping is disabled by default. But it is possible to do it with xorg-synaptics as well. But libinput is good either way. But unity-control-center does not have settings for it yet.

[Admin]

@Pilot6: I don't know which version you're running, but I can't find such a package in the Xenial repositories.

[Pilot6]

There is no such package. In Ubuntu it is xserver-xorg-input-synaptics. It is installed by default. But libinput overrides it if installed.

[Severus Tux]

@Pilot6 Are you telling about xserver-xorg-input-synaptics?

[Severus Tux]

@Pilot6 Oh.. its says its already installed. then it was present when I had the same problem.

[Pilot6]

Yes it is installed. If you do not have libinput you can disable tapping too. But libinput is better than synaptics either way.

[Admin]

What version of the gnome-control-center did you install? There is no such option in the GNOME 3.20 one that I am running.

[Nick Chackowsky]

Hmm... I guess I just installed the "default" one. sudo apt install gnome-control-center

[Admin]

Yes, I know, it's the one the standard repos, but they do not have the latest one, if you want the latest you have to add the Ubuntu GNOME (semi-unofficial, but maintained by those who maintain all of Ubuntu GNOME) ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3-staging and ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3 PPAs.

[Admin]

I understand that this should work on Unity too, so if you really want to help you can install it, but I think that this has to do not with the gnome-control-center, but rather some gsettings bug because it's set manually to the correct thing, but something seems to be ignore that.

[Severus Tux]

Works perfectly

[Admin]

@JacobVlijm: I tested that already, if you set any of the settings through gsettings or dconf-editor it has no effect whatsoever unless you install that package. It's a bug, I've even linked the relevant bug report. It should work as you said, but it doesn't without that package.

[Jason Southwell]

I see you've posted duplicate answers. One of these is a dupe, therefore. Care to flag :)?

[Admin]

@RolandiXor: I voted to close the other one as a duplicate of this one because if you look at the question this one is more broad and the other one fits into it.

[Admin]

I hope that I understanding you correctly, I assume you mean to flag the question and not the answer?

[Jason Southwell]

@ParanoidPanda yes.