The clickpad and the "sliding clicks" - please give us touchpad buttons!

Framework Laptop 13
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I’ve been a touchpad user for some 20 odd years now - since I was in high school, being a huge nerd bringing a laptop to every class. The touchpad is life. I don’t bring a mouse to use a laptop… I solely use the touchpad, even if a mouse is right there.

And I have absolutely HATED the trend of the past 5-8 years, where since around 2014, it’s become cool to go “full Apple” and remove the buttons from below the touchpad. Apple did it well enough, though - the click feel is adequate, and the cursor never/rarely behaves erratically when clicking. They worked really hard at making sure this huge design change would actually be tolerable. And it is - the rare occasions when I use my MacBook Air (2013), it doesn’t grate on my nerves too bad.

But within ONE DAY of opening my new Framework laptop, I’ve been frustrated by repetitive “sliding clicks” - a term I give to targeting an intended click, pushing down on the pad to click, and ʷᵒᵒᵖ the cursor slides to a side and clicks - usually missing the button or clicking something else. wₒₒₚ, it dodges to the other side and clicks. It takes touchpad frustration to the next level. It’s like a troll level in your own freakin’ PC.

About 1 in 10 clicks (and you know how many clicks you make while using a PC) seems to mis-register as a movement+click. My motion is typically to move the cursor and then push directly down (no actual movement on the pad) with the same finger, never lifting it. 10% of the time, slide-click. Often, multiple times in a row. (BTW, this is on a brand new install of Windows 11, with the Framework driver pack installed)

This is obviously not intended behavior, so there’s no setting to “fix” it. It’s just an inherent problem with clickpads, and it’s why, until my desire to support Framework outweighed my disgust of clickpads (and a quick test-drive of a friend’s Framework didn’t reveal any issues - obviously not long enough), outweighed my single-issue filter to only ever buy laptops with dedicated, real touchpad buttons.

Framework folks, I love y’all. But could you please. PLEase. PLEASE. Develop a secondary, swappable touchpad with actual left/right click buttons that are not active touch areas. I’d pay a hundred friggin’ bucks for it, maybe more. Just to have real buttons.

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Alternatively, an idea may be to black out/numb part of the pad, so my finger can always rest there as if it were a hardware button, but not affect the cursor. As it is now, I adopted the style of “point and click with the same finger” (no thumb), but THAT seems to result in sliding clicks. If I were able to go back to “thumb on button, finger to point” as is the norm, that’d eliminate sliding clicks as well.

I have no faith in touchpad makers (Alps, Synaptics, Elan, etc) to actually produce a touchpad driver on-par with what Apple made in order to ditch the touchpad buttons properly. So the right thing to do is just to put buttons back and stop making everyone immediately reach for a mouse.

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personally I’ve never liked touchpads. Best pointing device I ever used on a laptop (ignoring proper mice) is a trackball, and those haven’t been around for over a decade. Don’t like trackpoints either, I find them far too sensitive. (I have a tremor, which causes issues with using a trackpoint)

definitely like dedicated physical buttons though.

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I made a solution. An ugly solution, but it sure seems to have me feeling more comfortable using it. Not nearly as frictionless as the ThinkPad P52’s absolutely incredible touchpad, though… on that thing, I can CAD without a mouse. It’s crazy.

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Had some 3M VHB tape laying around, thought “that might work?”, applied it, it worked, and I smoothed it out with some matte scotch tape on the other sticky side. Now the “button” has the same texture as the pad itself, it doesn’t register tap/movement there, and I can rest my thumb on it.

I still end up with (far less frequent) slide-clicks, somehow. ಠ_ಠ

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Bumping this thread to see if anyone else has this issue and so the Framework team can see this too.

I’m having so many issues with unreliable clicking and it’s driving me insane. It’s also the ONLY issue I’ve been having with my Framework. PLEASE MAKE MOUSEPADS WITH PHYSICAL BUTTONS!!

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@anon81945988 But how do you do right-click or drag-drop?

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On my HP DM1 from 2011 with no dedicated mouse buttons and absolutely terrible “sliding clicks” as you call them, right-click works by tapping with two fingers at the same time.

Similarly, even since the Pentium 3 days, drag-and-drop is performed by tapping twice but making sure that you keep your finger on the touchpad on the second tap (e.g. tap->release->tap&hold), at which point moving your finger around the touchpad drags the item in question until you let off of the touchpad.

While I like physical buttons, I have no qualms about using taps on a touchpad (but clicking the actual touchpad itself is something I dislike). My main concern is that both my sister and father loath tap-to-click and have been sticking with older laptops that have physical buttons (which thus far have not been an issue performance-wise when paired with an SSD).

It may be worth mentioning that, for proper use of a trackpoint (something that other Framework users have expressed interest in, including none other than Louis Rossmann), physical buttons are straight-up required. Those buttons tend to be above the trackpad instead, but one could theorize a reversible design where you could simply rotate the touchpad 180 degrees depending on whether you want the buttons above or below the touchpad, most ideally paired with a BIOS-level setting to configure whether the buttons are above or below which would then also correctly configure which way the touchpad is oriented; alternatively the buttons and touchpad could be two separate pieces designed so that you can place them either above or below the touchpad.

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Right click is two finger tap. Drag and drop is double tap with one finger, keeping the finger down on the trackpad on the second tap, and then dragging, When the finger is lifted you release. On Windows when your finger reaches the edge of the trackpad while dragging something, if you hold at the edge the cursor will continue moving at a slow linear rate in the direction of trackpad edge. This means you never need to lift your finger during the process.

I mean I know it is different, and change can be difficult, but I infinitely prefer tap to click. It is more accurate. You can tap anywhere on the trackpad, and there is no cursor jitter. On top of that you aren’t wearing out a hinge needlessly requiring a physical motion.

Getting rid of buttons all together on trackpads makes them more robust and less likely to fail.

However, the beauty of the Framework philosophy is that it is your laptop! You can do as you please with it. If a 3rd party makes a button based trackpad as a replacement, that would be welcomed and championed by Framework themselves. (I’m pretty sure at least)

I’m not sure they have the means to iterate on that portion of the design for what I imagine is a very small portion of the customer base. This is why 3rd party add-ons are great!

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I bought a trackball mouse recently given my issues with the wrist. It isn’t as great as the earlier PS/2 trackballs but this Logitech M525 works well for me.

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Interestingly the sliding clicks aren’t a problem for me at all. I do the same as what you describe you do (press down on the trackpad with the same finger I used to move the cursor without lifting) and I’m having no issues

EDIT Video:

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If you do it for ~90% of your clicks, not just a couple isolated experiments, you’ll probably find what I did: that it does it for a large percentage of them. Just, obviously, not all of them. It’s just annoying enough to make you irritated with it.

There’s nothing more accurate than not moving your pointing finger at all, and your thumb presses the clicking button. You don’t have to lift a finger and tap it back down. You don’t have to push harder on that pointing finger to press the whole pad down. You just press the button that’s under your thumb to click. One finger does the pointing, one does the clicking. This is how I’ve worked for literal decades. It makes a touchpad almost as fast, comfortable, and accurate as a mouse – if it’s well implemented.

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I do it for 100% of my clicks and don’t have any issues. Maybe you’ve got a defective unit?

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¯_(ツ)_/¯

Maybe. Using any laptop with a clickpad is frustrating, but Framework’s is likely the worst I’ve used. I didn’t see these problems when I played with a friend’s Framework when I was still on the fence. The only thing I focused on was the touchpad experience, and I considered it “good enough to live with”. Unless maybe the touchpad has had multiple revisions, and this “PixArt” touchpad is unique to mine…

Sure would be nice if there was any dedicated software to use with the thing - like other touchpads have. It relies fully on Windows’ drivers, which is always a sub-optimal experience.

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Maybe it has something to do with that I’m on Linux, that those drivers are tweaked better

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What about trackpads that are configured to work and feel more like a trackball? Apparently the trackpads on the Steam Deck are set up as such:

That’s why I mentioned a design that can be similarly used with a trackpoint by simply either rotating it 180 degrees or being able to separately position the buttons above or below the trackpad, thereby maximizing the user-base of such a product without having to make two separate products.

Funny thing - while this is in fact how I tend to use physical buttons, pushing the click button with my thumb can actually can still result in the cursor moving a teeny bit for me, possibly due to my small hands whereby the action of pressing my thumb into the button causes my finger to flatten out and/or roll ever so slightly.

EDIT: Oh uh, to clarify, I’m talking about on an 11 year old Thinkpad with buttons above and below the touchpad - the “click buttons” in question that I use are the ones below the touchpad (it predates the concept of pushing in the entire touchpad in a button-like manner like the Framework does).

By contrast, I actually have more luck preventing the cursor from moving via tapping, but I find tapping to be a little bit slower than the thumb method you describe which is what I tend to do when trying to do things quickly.

Nevertheless, the tapping action doesn’t even have to be in the same location, e.g. you can pick up and move your finger to any other location on the touchpad and, when you tap, it’ll still register it as a “click” in the position where the cursor was previously positioned. Heck you could even tap with a second finger if you want if you lift off your primary finger, or maybe you can configure your OS in some way to treat a second finger being tapped as a left-click when when the first finger is held down at the same time.

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I did just add a quick edit stating that I was testing on an 11 year old Thinkpad and was similarly using buttons located below the touchpad (heck the touchpad itself doesn’t even support being a clickable button in itself like the Framework does).

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tldr.
What are the solutions of the users to this problem. I did not like these clickslider pads also.

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I still use the little bit of foam tape in the thumb-resting/traditional button-placed area of the touchpad (as in photos, way way above). My thumb rests there and I click the pad to click, as if it were a button. It’s janky and it still results in occasional slide-clicks, even though there’s literally no finger movement to cause it.

My true solution is that I just stopped using the Framework laptop as a daily. :sleepy: My work laptop is a Precision 7560, and my daily is a Latitude 5580 or a Latitude E7440, depending on which room I’m in. All 3 of which have wonderful touchpad buttons (and that Precision is an 11th gen Intel just like the Framework :wink: ).

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I would like an alternative touchpad option also, with a smaller pad and at least 2 preferabbly 3 physical buttons.

Using a “click area” and just pretending it’s a button is not a sufficient replacement for a button, even if you create a tactile boundary with tape, because:

  • The pad still registers the “button” finger on the pad and confuses it with your other finger that you are trying to use for dragging or selecting. It either thinks you’re trying to do a pinch/zoom gesture, or it screws up the aim not putting the pointer where you want, or it simply doesn’t move the pointer at all, or barely moves it a little. It’s infuriating.
  • There is actually only one physical button under the pad and it doesn’t register the equivalent of trying to press both buttons at once. I actually want 3 buttons not just 2, which is not outlandish, my X1 Carbon has 3, and all my mice have 3, and I use middle-click a lot. I’m merely willing to accept 2 as a compromise.

I also like the pad to be a lot smaller so that:

  • Less area to collect unwanted touches. (palm hits, etc.)
  • Smaller range of motion so everything fits within your finger’s reach without stretching or even moving your whole arm.

Everything the OP said in the first place basically and then some. It ain’t just him.

The pointer is a point of human interface and is highly personal preference. There is no one way that works well enough for everyone that you should just say everyone else, adapt to this way. For most machines, that just had to be that way because you couldn’t realistically offer multiple choices. But it seems that this machine is actually uniquely positioned to actually be able to offer the user a choice like that in a way that no others ever could. At least in theory a different version of the touch pad assembly could be made that users could replace themselves and which fits right in the existing spot. The closest to that sort of choice that ever came before is Thinkpads having both a pad and trackpoint at the same time.

I understand the company is small yet and can’t do everything, and I’m not trying to say this should go to the top of the emergency priority list. I’m just saying I really hate the touch pad and it’s one of the things I have to just swallow and work-around and generally just tolerate and excuse. I mostly just always carry a mouse and only use the touch pad when forced. That can’t be any product manufacturers goal in life. I do so because obviously the machine has so many other facets I value so highly, but that still isn’t exactly great. It’s just feedback that you can’t know any other way if no one says it.

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Thanks for the confirmation that I’m not the only one driven nuts by this. I know I can’t be the only one that naturally uses a touchpad in this way.

Just one tiny point, though:

This is actually exactly what I set out to fix, when I came up with my “solution” – finding a material that insulated the pad from sensing my finger resting on it. The tape I use here is 3M VHB foam tape - with matte scotch tape on top of it, for texture/smoothness, blocking the top adhesive. In terms of tactile, it’s about as good as it can get: it blocks the pad from sensing touch there, and it’s comfortable enough (not friction-sticky like smooth shiny plastic) to almost live with - if not for the other shortcomings of the pad.

As you mention, though: you can’t click both buttons at once (basically it’d just sense a single right-click if you try, here), and no middle-click either.

It seems like a distant dream at this point, but it’s still a dream none the less. I figure there’s got to be a reason Dell still keeps buttons on their highest-end workstation laptops!

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Lookit’ that absolute beauty. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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Nice, they even got a num pad in there! :heart_eyes:

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