Idea #6239: Automatically enable touchpad when mouse is not being used

Written by John Karahalis the 1 Apr 08 at 19:17. Category: Hardware support.
Related to: Nothing/Others. Status: New

Description

When I am using a laptop, determine if I am using an external mouse or not.

If I am not using an external mouse, enable the "Tap to Click", "Horizontal Scrolling", and "Vertical Scrolling" features of the touchpad.

When I connect an external mouse (or if I was already using one) disable these features.

This would be useful because some of the touchpad features, especially "Tap to Click", get in the way and cause problems when an external mouse is already being used.

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Duplicates

Idea #11148: disable touchpad when an external mouse is connected (13 votes)

[Report a duplicate and merge its votes to this idea]

Comments

rouge568 wrote on the 2 Apr 08 at 18:22

I agree that these should be available features, but I personally like to switch between touchpad and mouse (or use both at the same time). Please do not enable this by default.

John Karahalis wrote on the 2 Apr 08 at 19:16

I agree, not by default. But it would be great if System > Preferences > Mouse > Touchpad had the option "Enable/disable touchpad automatically".

Such an option would alleviate users of the frustration of frequently checking/unchecking "Tap to Click", "Horizontal Scrolling", and "Vertical Scrolling" depending on the location of the computer.

melusyne wrote on the 6 Apr 08 at 15:47

A good idea to work on, but
- this shouldn't be the default,
- it would really need to be configurable at will, with separated option for each mentioned features.(and more if any)

I find it extremely usefull to use both mouse and touchpad at the same time: mainly to scroll with the pad while using the mouse.

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