How to enable touchpad click

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Scope

Fedora tries to make various desktop environments available to its users. Since Fedora tries to stay as close to upstream as possible, we follow the various defaults selected by the desktop environment upstreams. Generally, this entails a disabled touchpad click by default. This wiki page tries to compile the different methods that can be used to enable "tapping" on various desktop environments.

Please note that this is only a resource to aid our users. For discussions on this setting, please talk to the relevant DE upstream. Fedora does not intend to make any changes to upstream defaults.

Desktop configurations

This wiki page has more information about Input Device configuration. An example xorg.conf.d snippet to enable tapping is given here.

GNOME

The "mouse and touchpad" utility can be used to enable tapping and set scrolling options in GNOME.

Official GNOME documentation

KDE Plasma Workspaces

1. enter KDE System Settings
2. choose Hardware / Input Devices / Touchpad (If it's not there, install kcm_touchpad first, then restart System Settings. It's installed by default.)
3. select the Tapping tab
4. check the "Enable tapping" checkbox
5. set some tapping actions under "Buttons" below, the default is to do nothing

Alternatively, the systemwide method described under Other window managers can also be used.

LXDE

Copy the /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf file to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/

cp /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf

Then, in your favourite text editor, modify this file as such:

Section  "InputClass"
Identifier  "touchpad catchall"
Driver  "synaptics"
MatchIsTouchpad  "on"

####################################
## The lines that you need to add ##
# Enable left mouse button by tapping
Option  "TapButton1"  "1"
# Enable vertical scrolling
Option  "VertEdgeScroll"  "1"
# Enable right mouse button by tapping lower right corner
Option "RBCornerButton" "3"
####################################

MatchDevicePath  "/dev/input/event*"
EndSection

For more information on tweaking xorg.conf.d files, please read the man page:

man xorg.conf

XFCE

XFCE 4.10 in Fedora 18
XFCE in Fedora 18 will be version 4.10 which will have a utility similar to GNOME

For Fedora <= 17, and therefore XFCE <= 4.8:

Copy the /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf file to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/

cp /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf

Then, in your favourite text editor, modify the new file as such:

Section  "InputClass"
Identifier  "touchpad catchall"
Driver  "synaptics"
MatchIsTouchpad  "on"

####################################
## The lines that you need to add ##
# Enable left mouse button by tapping
Option  "TapButton1"  "1"
# Enable vertical scrolling
Option  "VertEdgeScroll"  "1"
# Enable right mouse button by tapping lower right corner
Option "RBCornerButton" "3"
####################################

MatchDevicePath  "/dev/input/event*"
EndSection

For more information on tweaking xorg.conf.d files, please read the man page:

man xorg.conf

Other window managers

Copy the /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf file to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/

cp /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf

Then, in your favourite text editor, modify this file as such:

Section  "InputClass"
Identifier  "touchpad catchall"
Driver  "synaptics"
MatchIsTouchpad  "on"

####################################
## The lines that you need to add ##
# Enable left mouse button by tapping
Option  "TapButton1"  "1"
# Enable vertical scrolling
Option  "VertEdgeScroll"  "1"
# Enable right mouse button by tapping lower right corner
Option "RBCornerButton" "3"
####################################

MatchDevicePath  "/dev/input/event*"
EndSection

For more information on tweaking xorg.conf.d files, please read the man page:

man xorg.conf