bash script toggle touchpad with xinput.

toggle_touchpad

#!/bin/bash

id=$(xinput | grep TouchPad | grep -E -o "id=[[:digit:]]+" | grep -E -o "[[:digit:]]+")

if [ "$id" = "" ]
then
    echo "no touchpad found."
    exit 0
fi

status=$(xinput list-props 10 | grep "Device Enabled" | cut -f3)

if [ $status -eq 0 ]
then
    xinput set-prop $id "Device Enabled" 1
    echo "enabling device $id"
else
    xinput set-prop $id "Device Enabled" 0
    echo "disabling device $id"
fi

Hello!

Thanks for creating this. However it appears to me that you have hardcoded your device number (10), so if anyone's touchpad is in any other number this will not work. Additionally (at least in my case), xinput will call them Touchpad and not TouchPad. Lastly, more than one pointing device under that category can be present, and your script will crash if it is the case, as it will try to pass 2 IDs separated by a new line whenever we use the ID (in your case it may not, as it is hardcoded).

The following modification will use the IDs captured by grep and loop through them to enable/disable all of them (also uses the string "Touchpad" instead of "TouchPad", but that is just for my own setup.

I am a noob and don't know how to submit merge requests so I will just paste it here:

#!/bin/bash

# List devices called anything "Touchpad" and get their numerical IDs
id=$(xinput | grep Touchpad | grep -E -o "id=[[:digit:]]+" | grep -E -o "[[:digit:]]+")

# Handle cases where no devices are found
if [ "$id" = "" ]
then
    echo "no touchpad found."
    exit 0
fi

# Loop through captured IDs and toggle their status
for i in $id;do
	status=$(xinput list-props "$i" | grep "Device Enabled" | cut -f3)
    	if [ $status -eq 0 ]
    	then
            xinput set-prop "$i" "Device Enabled" 1
            echo "enabling device $id"
    	else
            xinput set-prop "$i" "Device Enabled" 0
            echo "disabling device $id"
    fi
done

Thanks again, this helped me manage my touchpad in i3wm. For anyone who might be here for the same reason, save this script as, for example, touchpad-toggle.sh, and add this line to your i3 config file:

bindsym XF86TouchpadToggle exec /home/path/to/configfile/touchpad-toggle.sh