I have recently received my 13 pro and have really been enjoying it. I would like to disable the touchscreen function. I see the guidance for Windows users, but I haven’t seen official instructions for Linux users. Ideally this would be a setting in the UEFI, but failing that, what is the recommended way to disable the touchscreen? A udev rule or something else?
For reference, my DE is Gnome 50
I’ve been pondering about this, to save battery power. Is there an option in the BIOS?
There is not an option in the bios. I suspect they will eventually add it. For now you can install the framework_tool which gives you access to hardware configuration options.
Didn’t work for me, unfortunately.
I installed the framework-tool package from the Ubuntu Resolute archive, but get an error when trying to use it to disable the touchscreen.
$ sudo framework_tool --touchscreen-enable false
[ERROR] Failed to enable/disable touch
Should I be doing something different?
Other settings like --kblight work as expected.
I’ve researched this too and found that there is no proper way to disable it with existing tools. The current release of framework_tool can only control the touchscreen on the Laptop 12. The Laptop 13’s touchscreen is controlled a different way, which also differs slightly between AMD and Intel boards. Support for Intel Series 3 boards is in the framework_tool codebase, but it’s on a separate branch and isn’t in any released version yet.
I got my Framework about a month ago and started working on a GUI app (GitHub) to replicate the most useful parts of framework_tool. It can currently disable the touchscreen on Intel Series 3 boards, using the same approach as the unreleased framework_tool commit. On those boards the firmware also drives the touchscreen itself, disabling it when the lid closes and re-enabling it when the lid opens, so a manual disable lasts only until the lid is next opened.
It should also be possible to disable the touchscreen with a udev rule, but that doesn’t really disable it: the touch controller keeps working as usual, and the OS just ignores its reports. I haven’t tried that approach, because my app already works on my mainboard.
I agree with the above that using framework_tools to disable the touch screen just fails.
Is the intent just to disable the touchscreen ability in Linux? Blocking or disabling the driver interface is the equivalent to disableing the touch input device under Windows right? There should be a way to do this under Linux I would imagine.
If the purpose is to save power then a BIOS level disablement would be the better choice.
I think the intent for most people is to disable it at a hardware level to save power. A lot of people who have touchscreen laptops don’t use it, so it’s wasted power, no matter how little.