To start off: I have installed the drivers package and disabled PS/2 emulation in the BIOS. The touchpad generally works fine.
I haven’t used a Windows laptop with a “clicky” touchpad before, but since i’ve received my Framework i’ve noticed something i find very strange.
Scenario 1:
Use single finger to move the cursor to a location (for example over a file in the Explorer)
Lift the finger off the touchpad
Put down two fingers and press down on the touchpad
Result: A right-click is performed, as expected
Scenario 2:
Use single finger to move the cursor to a location (for example over a file in the Explorer)
Put down a second finger without lifting the first finger and press down on the touchpad with both fingers
Result: A left-click is performed, as if i’d never had put down a second finger
Expected result: A right-click is performed
Am i correct in my understanding that this is the intended (or at least commonly observed) behavior for a touch pad on Windows 11? By the way, this applies in a similar fashion to middle-clicking with three fingers. Under Fedora 36 / Gnome 42, it does indeed behave the way i expect.
Is there any way to change the behavior of the touchpad to align with my expectations?
I think I’m getting confused as to whether or not you are tapping or pressing.
Though to share my experience, two finger taps (no click) give me the right click, one finger taps give me the left click. Presses (Click) of the touchpad are dependent on the placement of those fingers. Further to the right, gives me a right click, and further to the left seems split between a right click and a left click.
I am not referring to tapping at all, only pressing (the haptic “clicky” thing where the touchpad is physically pressed down)
Using the pressing feature feels the most natural for me when I already have 1 or 2 fingers in contact with the touchpad and want to left-click or right-click at the location of my cursor, so that is what I’m looking to improve. Tapping would require me to lift off my fingers, which I don’t want to do.
Another situation where this comes up is when closing multiple tabs in a browser, an action for which I often use the middle-click. If you want to trigger the middle click with a three-finger-press, you move your cursor over a tab, lift them off the trackpad and then press down with three fingers to perform a middle-click. If you want to then also close the next tab that is now under your mouse cursor, you should be able to simply click again with your three fingers to close that tab with another middle-click. Instead, you will perform a simple left-click. I don’t really understand why this inconsistency would be wanted. It seems completely counter-intuitive to me.
That seems correct. The two fingers have to touch at the same time, or within a short time span. You may be able to set the time span so it records as a ‘one time > two finger’ message rather than a 'two time > one finger contact@
Hmm i don’t think that is correct. If you simultaneously put down two fingers on the touchpad (not pressing yet, just touching or 2-finger scrolling) and then press down after a second of waiting, it will also perform a left-click instead of the right-click i would expect.
A variation of this might still apply, but i have a hard time finding anything on this on Google.
Yeah, I’ve also noticed this issue. I’ve gotten used to it but it was slightly irritating. I’m not sure if this is an issue with the trackpad itself or with Microsoft’s Precision drivers
Windows has been like this forever. The bottom-right corner is right click, everywhere else is left. There is no middle-click unless you lift your fingers and tap.
If you want to use it how you are thinking, like a macbook, most touchpad drivers in linux give you the option. I’m not aware of any way to enable it on windows. It would be awesome if we could get the option.
I figured this was the intended behavior by Windows, sadly. I suppose I am hoping someone here found a workaround or third-party tool that changed this. Maybe it’s just me, but the way Windows does it seems quite unintuitive (and I have never owned a Mac device).
I’m gonna look into possibly making such a tool myself, but I don’t have any experience working with these Windows APIs. I did manage to copy-paste some stuff and more or less fully reverse-engineer and decode the RAWHID raw byte array bRawData you get from the RawInput API.
It gets me the current number of fingers on the touchpad (and even their locations), so if I can integrate that with some code to set a global hook that listens for left-clicks and changes/replaces them it should in theory be possible.
It’s funny how expectations work - this works exactly as I expect from prior windows laptops and is a pleasure to use. I tear my hair out trying to figure out how to click on macbooks!
…also funny how there’s no user definable option as to which behaviour to run with. It should be the norm to allow users to transition from one behaviour to another.
The thing is, i’ve never in my life used a MacBook for more than 5 minutes. I’m pretty sure that i got used to this behavior with my ASUS Zenbook i bought in 2012 that i just remembered had a clicky touchpad as well. I was almost exclusively using Linux on it though. So perhaps that shaped my expectations. But honestly, i just feel like the clicking should work the same way the tapping works.
Either way, there is no way to convince me that the default behavior is not awful due to how inconsistent it is. Honestly i might prefer to disable the clicks completely so i can force myself to get used to only using tapping, which actually behaves in a consistent manner. Doesn’t seem to be possible though, except with maybe a hardware modification…
Anyways, i’m just ranting at this point. The salt is piling on. Hopefully i can fix this whole thing with software and learn some Win32 API magic at the same time. Otherwise it looks like i’m just gonna have to get used to it, or always plug in a mouse when booting Windows.
Edit: To be clear, i’m not mad at Framework, just Windows.