The touchpad often stops working randomly. I think there is a flaky connection between the touch pad panel and the input deck. Here are the symptoms and the things I tried:
- I tried in both NixOS and a clean install of Ubuntu 2404. No difference
- The touchpad is mounted in the middle position (and so is the keyboard)
- Mounting the touchpad in the right position fixes the problem
- Sometimes pressing the panel above the touchpad (where the connector is located) fixes the problem
- Reboots seem to fix the problem sometimes
- The problem seems to occur more if the laptop is rested on my lap then when it’s flat on a table
- cat /dev/input/event4 shows nothing when the touchpad has stopped working
Anyone else have this problem? How do I find out if it is a problem with the touch pad panel or a problem with the input deck. The fact that placing it on the right seems to suggest it’s a problem with the latter
Most likely it is some kind of fault with the midplate pogo pin connector to touchpad contact. It could potentially be between the contacts and the touchpad ribbon cable. Another person here had an unresponsive touchpad that they were able to fix by reseating the ribbon cable (black with silver wires and a piece of blue tape near the end). This may or may not resolve the issue, and the issue may reoccur.
If I had to guess though, there is likely enough flex in the chassis/midplate/touchpad to prevent contact (though I would have originally guessed this wasnt possible due to the magnets right next to the contacts).
I would say you should try reseating the cable first and see if that helps. Also maybe check the flatness of your touchpad by placing it upside down on a flat surface (glass or a countertop would be ideal but not necessary)
I’ve been having the same problem, and eventually the mousepad just completely stopped working. I ordered a new touchpad and it also doesn’t work, so the touchpad itself doesn’t seem to be the problem. Very frustrating.
Thank you for the suggestions. I replugged the ribbon cable, but that didn’t help.
The touch pad is already flexed in a way that should be positive for contact. I’m hesitant to flex it further.
There appears to be something wrong with this generation of laptops. I was having the same issues as you describe, I tried Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04 and Fedora 40 and it didn’t change anything. Framework also ended up sending a replacement touchpad and mid-plate, and the issues persisted. Tried moving the touchpad around, having no keyboard, even upgraded the BIOS and it still happened.
It seems like if it works after a reboot/start up then it will continue to work fine, there’s no combination of BIOS or system settings that can fix it. I would bet there’s some kind of voltage regulation issue with the motherboard. Unfortunately Framework was not able to come up with a solution, so I had to return it. It just was not usable for any reasonable amount of time.
Hopefully they will get this sorted, because I am seeing this issue pop up all over these forums and reddit, etc, and the symptoms are all exactly the same.
Oh well, I will give them a try again in a few years I guess, but this experience has been very disappointing compared to the original Framework 13 I have. No issues with that one.
This seems to be a software issue. I was using Ubuntu 22.04 and then recently switched to 24.04. I never had a single trackpad issues with 22.04. After the upgrade, I very occasionally have issues with the trackpad registering on login. To fix, I restart. I can’t reliably reproduce this issue. My trackpad is also bowed a little bit so it’s unlikely a contact issue.
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