I’ve just moved back to a Linux laptop, specifically Arch Linux, using XFCE4 on an HP Dragonfly Elite, after a few years trying Mac. Totally love it, the full Linux experience without trying to be MacOS.
One thing that did annoy me was the touchpad was set to have three “buttons” or click areas along the bottom. This meant if I went to choose a browser tab, sometimes I’d miss the left edge button and hit the middle button closing the tab. Annoying.
These are the steps I used to set it to be one longer Left button with no right button.
~ 🐠 yay -S xorg-xinput~ 🐠 xinput⎡Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]⎜ ↳Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]⎜ ↳Wacom HID 4924 Finger id=13 [slave pointer (2)]⎜ ↳SYNA30A1:00 06CB:CD74 Mouse id=14 [slave pointer (2)]⎜ ↳SYNA30A1:00 06CB:CD74 Touchpad id=15 [slave pointer (2)]⎜ ↳SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad id=19 [slave pointer (2)]⎣Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]↳Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]↳Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)]↳Video Bus id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]↳Power Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]↳Sleep Button id=9 [slave keyboard (3)]↳HP HD Camera: HP HD Camera id=10 [slave keyboard (3)]↳HP HD Camera: HP IR Camera id=11 [slave keyboard (3)]↳Wacom HID 4924 Pen id=12 [slave keyboard (3)]↳Intel HID events id=16 [slave keyboard (3)]↳Intel HID 5 button array id=17 [slave keyboard (3)]↳AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=18 [slave keyboard (3)]↳HP WMI hotkeys id=20 [slave keyboard (3)]↳HP Wireless hotkeys id=21 [slave keyboard (3)]↳HP Active Pen G3 Keyboard id=22 [slave keyboard (3)]
Now I can see the name of my touchpad “SYNA30A1:00 06CB:CD74 Touchpad”.
Next command will show the existing button map, which returns the map, currently “1 2 3 4 5 6 7”. Not quite sure what 4-7 does though!
~ 🐠 xinput get-button-map 'SYNA30A1:00 06CB:CD74 Touchpad'1 2 3 4 5 6 7
And now I can see my annoying “button 2”. To test the change this command does it temporarily:
~ 🐠 xinput set-button-map 'SYNA30A1:00 06CB:CD74 Touchpad' 1 1 3 4 5 6 7~ 🐠 xinput get-button-map 'SYNA30A1:00 06CB:CD74 Touchpad'1 1 3 4 5 6 7
Now I have button 1 set in 2 slots, button 3 in the third slot and no button 2.
To make it permanent add the following to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/30-touchpad.conf
Section "InputClass"Identifier "SYNA30A1:00 06CB:CD74 Touchpad"Option "ButtonMapping" "1 1 3 4 5 6 7"EndSection
And now it sticks after rebooting! Sweet! 😎