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

For what it’s worth, I have had a partial solution on my FW13 since I got it - and it’s come in handy since it became one of my daily drivers with the Ryzen board upgrade.

I have a strip of VHB tape applied to the bottom of the touchpad’s bottom-left lower half, where a click button should go. VHB tape is double-sided adhesive, and the top backing doesn’t make a good finger surface - but matte Scotch tape does. I peeled off the backing and applied a precision-cut strip of matte Scotch tape (like the kind often found at an office desk, for patching torn paper) to it. It makes a comfortable resting spot for a thumb, and the nature of VHB tape prevents it from being detected as a tap, and pressing the tape-pad acts as a precise left-click without drift.

Leaving the right half exposed allows it to be detected as a right-click. The pad area serves as a null zone for my thumb to rest, as I idle my thumb on it while reading something, for example. It works adequately enough. It’s been on my laptop since I got it, and it hasn’t degraded in the slightest, with untold thousands of clicks.

I still continue to wish for a proper touchpad without a click behind the pad, and with 2 (preferably 3!) real buttons. I daily-drive a MacBook Air, and its haptic click is the most precise clickpad in existence - but it still feels like interaction friction.

The barrier to entry for an individual to source/create a touchpad is too high, I think, for an aftermarket option. Maybe that same barrier to entry is what’s holding up a new touchpad option. But also, maybe now that Framework has leveled out and got the new model out, … maybe they can work on this? I can dream, right?

(edit: I realized after posting that I already posted this early in the thread :joy: BUT HEY, it could use a refresh with many more folks posting their desire/trouble with the touchpad 2+ years later :wink: )

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I am shopping for a new laptop and everything about the Framework is amazing EXCEPT the lack of physical touchpad buttons. I had a chance to play with my friend’s Framework and immediately hated the feel of the touchpad, for the same reason I hate the feel of a Macbook’s touchpad. Please give us the option of having physical buttons - after all, isn’t that the goal of Framework, to give users options?

This is the honestly the only thing keeping me from buying a Framework.

Same here. Getting ready to order a new laptop and as much as I like everything else it won’t be a Framework due to the lack of physical touchpad buttons. Lenovo keeps taking away things users actually want but at least they still have these so once again they’ll get my business.

When my current laptop breaks I will be strongly considering a Framework 16. However, I’m yet another from the crowd that loves the Thinkpad mouse buttons and nub. One finger is dedicated to the left click while another is dedicated to moving the pointer. If the Framework 16 can offer such a setup, it would make the choice a no-brainer. As-is, I will have to spend a considerable amount of time trying to determine if I can make my hands work without the physical button. I hate to pull the disability card, but physical buttons are significantly easier for me due to a disability I have, though obviously other people would benefit from this option, too.

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