Toggle touchpad on/off on Ubuntu

README.md

Toggle the touchpad on/off with a keyboard shortcut on Ubuntu 16.04

The keyboard on the Dell XPS is far too sensitive and I would prefer for the touchpad to be disabled while a mouse is plugged in.

Instructions

1. In the Terminal, determine the device number that corresponds to your touchpad by running:

    xinput
   

   For instance, this is the output I get on my laptop:

    $ xinput
    ⎡ Virtual core pointer                          id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
    ⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
    ⎜   ↳ SteelSeries Kana Gaming Mouse             id=10   [slave  pointer  (2)]
    ⎜   ↳ DLL075B:01 06CB:76AF Touchpad             id=12   [slave  pointer  (2)]
    ⎣ Virtual core keyboard                         id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
        ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard               id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
        ↳ Power Button                              id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
        ↳ Video Bus                                 id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
        ↳ Power Button                              id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
        ↳ Sleep Button                              id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]
        ↳ Integrated_Webcam_HD                      id=11   [slave  keyboard (3)]
        ↳ Intel Virtual Button driver               id=13   [slave  keyboard (3)]
        ↳ Intel HID events                          id=14   [slave  keyboard (3)]
        ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard              id=15   [slave  keyboard (3)]
        ↳ Dell WMI hotkeys                          id=17   [slave  keyboard (3)]
   

   So my device number is 12.

2. Copy toggle-touchpad somewhere on your $PATH and make it executable.

3. Replace the device_number variable in toggle-touchpad as appropriate.

4. Under System Settings > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Custom Shortcuts, create a new shortcut, name it (e.g. "Toggle touchpad on/off"), and set the command to toggle-touchpad. I set the shortcut to Super-Z on mine (Super refers to the Windows key).

5. Now you can hit Super-Z to toggle the touchpad on/off.

References

• https://askubuntu.com/questions/863746/keyboard-shortcut-to-toggle-enable-disable-laptop-touchpad
• https://askubuntu.com/questions/844151/enable-disable-touchpad

toggle-touchpad

#!/bin/bash

# This is the device number matching touchpad
# Determine the device number by running `xinput`
device_number=12

# Determine the state (0 for disabled, 1 for enabled)
state="$(xinput list-props "${device_number}" | grep "Device Enabled" | grep -o "[01]$")"

if [[ "${state}" == '0' ]]; the
    xinput --enable "${device_number}"
    DISPLAY=:0 notify-send --urgency=low "Touchpad enabled"
else
    xinput --disable "${device_number}"
    DISPLAY=:0 notify-send --urgency=low "Touchpad disabled"
fi

exit 0

Line 10 - lost the letter "n" in the word "then".