turn on/off touchpad on linux

Posted on Edited on In ,

Touchpad control on Linux running on Alienware is not supported by Fn+f11, so you may need this small script.

new to shell script, you might want improve it

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#!/bin/bash

if [ "$1" == "on" ]; then
    /usr/bin/xinput enable "`xinput list | grep -i touchpad | awk '{print $3" "$4" "$5}'`"
elif [ "$1" == "off" ]; then
    /usr/bin/xinput disable "`xinput list | grep -i touchpad | awk '{print $3" "$4" "$5}'`"
else
    echo " Usage: touchpad on/off"
fi

You might wannt to change awk '{print $3" "$4" "$5}' part so to get your whole touchpad name. Check before you run

chmod +x this.sh && ls -s this.sh .bin/touchpad is recommended.