Disable Touchpad when USB Mouse is connected

Support
1

Hey there, I’m pretty new to Manjaro and still configuring the System.
I have installed the KDE Edition of Manjaro.

Now I wanted to disable the touchpad of my laptop, when I plug in a mouse via USB.
Is there any working tutorial how to do this? I have already tried it with the help of this site.
I also tried searching for other methods, but most of them are old forum posts and so they are not available anymore or not working anymore

Hope somebody can help me

2

Hello and welcome,

In principle is fantastic that you went to wiki, but on KDE Plasma is easy to just enable that option
In Input Devices > Touchpad on the last tab.

image

Let us know if that is working or not for you.

3

Thanks for the quick reply.
I have searched the settings in the first place, but it don’t have these tabs in the settings :frowning:

Screenshot_20200819_221816
Screenshot_20200819_2218161033×730 63.6 KB

Thats how it looks for me, but there is no option to disable the touchpad when a mouse is connected.
Maybe I should also say that i have chosen the minimal installation

4

Is an important aspect, but the most important is that you use the xf86-input-synaptics driver apparently, hence the lack of those options in your case.
Please share from terminal:
cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/30-touchpad.conf
Make it be as formatted text. Use </> icon above

Or maybe is a different file … 50-touchpad.conf ?

5

Now I get those options in the settings. I have tried a few things I found online and now the options appeared after a reset.
if I remember it right, it was installing libinput and some other Synaptics driver and also editing a config file…
But I can’t say what helped me in the end (as solution for others that may search for help)

6

The option in plasma is only accessible with the synaptic driver… not with libinput.
I don’t say it’s not possible to do it with only libinput (i don’t know) but the GUI option is only visible with the synaptic driver.

7

Ouch, I came here looking for this as well.

Running this in a loop should have a similar effect, once I find out which command turns off my touchpad:

if lsusb --verbose 2>&1 | grep --quiet "Mouse"; then
        // Something here that will turn off the touchpad
fi

My GUI doens’t have that option either, unfortunately. It’s exactly the same as Nelrid posted.