Where to configure Touchpad in Cinnamon

greyseal96 · 2017-11-15 22:03:18

Hi all,

I use Cinnamon as my DE. With a recent update to Cinnamon the multi-finger clicks got switched around on me. I previously had 3 finger click mapped to a right click and 2 finger click mapped to middle click. After the update, 3 finger click is middle click and 2 finger click is right click. I'd like to get that switched back because the clicks are in my muscle memory and I'm closing things when I actually intend to be right clicking.

When I first installed Arch on my laptop with Cinnamon, touchpad support was pretty slim and I remember configuring it all through the Touchpad Synaptics config file. Later on, Cinnamon added much better support for touchpads and I also seem to remember reading that we should use libinput to configure the touchpad now. I've tried searching but I can't find anything definitively saying which I should use to configure the touchpad. Is the touchpad only configurable via the Cinnamon System Settings Control Center or is there also a config file in which I can make some tweaks? I'm hoping that somebody can point me in the right direction so that I can figure out which config file (if any) to edit to get the 2 and 3 finger clicks back to what they were set as.

jasonwryan · 2017-11-15 22:06:21

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Libinput

greyseal96 · 2017-11-30 10:07:37

Thank you jasonwryan. That pointed me in the right direction. I found out some more information which I'll share here.

After reading through the libinput wiki page I learned that it can coexist with other drivers like Synaptics. Since I know that I've also got Synaptics installed I checked in the Xorg log, and saw that Xorg is using the Synaptics touchpad driver:

$ grep -e "Using input driver '[A-Za-z]*'" /var/log/Xorg.0.log
    [    26.071] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'Power Button'
    [    26.090] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'Asus Wireless Radio Control'
    [    26.130] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'Video Bus'
    [    26.171] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'Video Bus'
    [    26.211] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'Sleep Button'
    [    26.232] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'ASUS USB2.0 Webcam: ASUS USB2.0'
    [    26.275] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'Asus WMI hotkeys'
    [    26.311] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'AT Translated Set 2 keyboard'
    [    26.340] (II) Using input driver 'synaptics' for 'ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad'

Based on that, I looked in the /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d directory and found a 50-synaptics.conf file. Inside I found options to set the TapButtons so I set them to be the following:

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "touchpad catchall"
    Driver "synaptics"
    MatchIsTouchpad "on"
    Option "TapButton1" "1"
    Option "TapButton2" "3"
    Option "TapButton3" "2"
    Option "VertEdgeScroll" "on"
    Option "HorizEdgeScroll" "on"
    MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
EndSection

However, after I saved that and rebooted, that still didn't fix my problem. TapButton2 action was still "2", or right click and TapButton3 action was still "3", or middle click, even though the config file had it the other way. Also, here is what synclient reports for the loaded configuration:

$ synclient -l | grep -i tapbutton
    TapButton1              = 1
    TapButton2              = 3
    TapButton3              = 2

So, for some reason, it seems like the config file settings are loaded but, effectively, they are being ignored. Interestingly enough, if I manually set the TapButton settings like so:

synclient TapButton2=2 TapButton3=3

the buttons work as expected. So it's almost like something is forcing the settings to be backwards. Manually setting the TapButtons to the reverse of what they should be is OK as a temporary solution but I'm wondering if there is a more permanent solution or fix that anybody knows about.

progandy · 2017-11-30 11:19:05

Probably the cinnamon settings daemon restores the settings from the cinnamon config.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/To … 2FCinnamon
If there is no option to change the button configuration, then you probably have to add an autostart script that first sleeps a bit to wait for cinnamon to complete its configuration and then change it.

Last edited by progandy (2017-11-30 11:23:08)

Arch Linux

#1 2017-11-15 22:03:18

Where to configure Touchpad in Cinnamon

#2 2017-11-15 22:06:21

Re: Where to configure Touchpad in Cinnamon

#3 2017-11-30 10:07:37

Re: Where to configure Touchpad in Cinnamon

#4 2017-11-30 11:19:05

Re: Where to configure Touchpad in Cinnamon

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