Laptop 16 touchpad sensitivity

Community Support
,
1

Ubuntu 26.04 on a Laptop 16, AMD AI 9 HX 370 w/ Radeon 890M x 24

It’s fantastic – great keyboard, great display, light enough, and I really like the modularity.

But the touchpad is terrible. It constantly interrupts my typing with cursor movements and clicks. The only chance I have of typing much at all is to hold my hands in an unnaturally high position, especially my right thumb, and even that is not foolproof. This is what I typed on the Laptop 16 before giving up and switching back to my old System76 laptop (which is pretty good too, but not as good).

<<<<
I have terrible problems with my Laptop 16 touchpad {cursor jumped three or four times} sensitivity. I find Emacs especially useful here, since the extra taps show up as unknown keystrokes. Sometimes the touchpad just moves the cursor and I end up retyping several words once I’ve put the cursor back where it belongs.

This ( Ubuntu or Fedora Touchpad Isn't Working ) says Laptop 16 requires a different approach for Palm Rejection here ( linux-docs/framework-laptop-16-disable-touchpad-typing.md at main · FrameworkComputer/linux-docs · GitHub ):

sudo tee -a /usr/share/libinput/50-framework.quirks > /dev/null <<'EOF'
[Framework Laptop 16 Keyboard Module]
MatchName=Framework Laptop 16 Keyboard Module*
MatchUdevType=keyboard
MatchDMIModalias=dmi:*svnFramework:pnLaptop16*
AttrKeyboardIntegration=internal
EOF

Then

sudo chmod 644 /usr/share/libinput/50-framework.quirks

That helped, but it only reduces the errors a little, it does not eliminate them. It remains unusable for general work.

I have seen several mentions in these forums of reducing sensitivity {cursor jumped several times} but no description of how. I’m running Ubuntu; not that I like it, but my other computers came with it, and there are enough problems with different Ubuntu versions without adding system differences. But each release seems to remove more and more config choices; I could swear one version had sensitivity configuration, but I don’t see it now (26.04).

What exactly happens with “Disable Touchpad While Typing”? How long does the touchpad stay disabled after each keystroke?

I think one problem is the physical size and location of the touchpad. It’s farther to the right than I am used to. I find I can reduce my problem if I curl my right thumb under my palm while typi{cursor jumped}ng, but I use my thumb for typing, so that’s not very helpful. I’ve tried holding my thumb high, but it’s really awkward.

I chose the one-piece haptic touchpad, not the three-piece, and I no longer remember why. But the three-piece says it can be positioned farther left. Would that be a help? {cursor jumped} I worry that all it would do is shift my problems from my right hand to my left hand. But I don’t see it in the store; is it even possible to change touchpads? The configurator says I’d save $70, but not the actual prices. {Browser page kept jumping around and increasing / decreasing sizes while looking for it}

What is a haptic touchpad anyway? Is it supposed to vibrate or push back when clicked?

>>>>

2

I found the DIY page and moved the touchpad to the left; both spacers on the right side. Five minutes of editing with no touchpad interference. Signs point to … try some more. I’ll report back in a day or two.

But I’d really like to know …

  • Is there some way to decrease touchpad sensitivity?
  • Would the one-piece haptic touchpad be better? The description says it takes up the entire bottom row and cannot be shifted left. I also can’t find it in the parts page.
3

A small update. Moving the touchpad left did reduce its spontaneous hallucinations, but it did not eliminate them. The cursor still spontaneously beams itself elsewhere on the screen, and spontaneously clicks. It only happens maybe once every minute or two now instead of every few seconds, but that’s too much. Someday it’s going to click a button instead of just moving the cursor. It’s already interrupted some menu actions; sooner or later that’s going to do something harmful that I won’t be able to recover from.

I still have the same basic question: Is there some way to reduce touchpad sensitivity?

4

Hi, I also have Ubuntu 26.04 and I actually don’t see the option to lower the sensitivity in the settings, I think you’ll have to do it from the terminal with commands that unfortunately I don’t know, but I recommend keeping the disable touchpad while typing option enabled, it should help you quite a bit, I have it enabled and I have no problems. To better understand this random teleportation problem, does it only occur while you’re typing or at any time?

5

It happens with all apps, but I mostly edit text files here. I do keep the 'disable touchpad while typing; option enabled.

There are many things I dislike about Ubuntu, but dumbing it down and hiding options is one of the worst. It’s as if they’re afraid showing too many options will scare people away.

6

As an example. a web page had embedded videos, which I normally don’t watch. But two of them began playing just from running the cursor over them. The rest did not. It’s pretty frustrating and makes this laptop almost unusable for anything except text editing, and even then I have to pay attention to catch the cursor jumps and menu popups.

7

I found “wayland-scroll-factor” which only adjusts the scroll sensitivity. Did no good but I’ll see if the source provides any hints.