Ubuntu: How to Turn Off Your Trackpad

Overview
Trackpads can be very annoying when programming on laptops. Your palm can accidentally brush against it when pressing keys and click into another program.

Solution
In Ubuntu, you can easily disable the touch pad from the command line. Todo so, follow these steps:

1. Open up your terminal
2. Execute this command: xinput
• This command will show you information about the inputs that are connected to the laptop.
3. Search for "TouchPad" and find the "id" that is on that line (example: id=10)
4. Disable the touch pad by executing this command (Replace <id> with whatever id you got from step 3): xinput set-prop <id> "Device Enabled" 0
• Example if your id is 10: xinput set-prop 10 "Device Enabled" 0

Your touch pad should now be disabled. To re-enable, just change the ending 0 in step 4 to a 1 like this: xinput set-prop <id> "Device Enabled" 1

Conclusion
Turning off your touch pad will be very useful in situations where you only want to use your keyboard, like if you're programming. However, some things, like using a website, will still require you to use the touch pad. This is why I suggest creating a bash script to enable and disable the touch pad so you don't have to remember these commands every time.



NOTE: This guide is currently in rough draft form and could be improved with clearer instructions and pictures. If you would like it to be more in depth, I will be extremely happy to improve on this, all you need to do is ask in the comments and I will do it asap (I just don't want to spend forever on something no one reads and/or cares about).