touchpad sensitivity

[RJVB]

I'm running Linux Mint with a KDE desktop on 2 laptops, an HP G62 with a Synaptics touchpad, and an Acer Aspire A0722 with an Elantech touchpad. On both systems but esp. the HP, touchpad sensitivity is over the top. Behaviour is acceptable when using a "firm touch", but when the pad is touched slightly (e.g. while typing!!) the pointer moves way too fast and/or jumps around. Actions like 2 finger scrolling through a list, interacting with tiny controls, using graphics applications etc. become delicate if not undoable because of this. It also happens way too frequently that all of a sudden I'm typing in a way different location than I thought I was, or that large swaths of text get selected and then replaced by the next keystrokes. Setting PalmDetect to 1 with the synclient tool doesn't help (or at least not enough).

All this doesn't happen under Win7. What parameters can be used to tone down sensitivity, if any? It's not simply a question of decreasing the max. speed and acceleration parameters - I've already tried that.

[regvg]

Having the same se for over problem. Laptop in u >>> see! String "se for over" was meant to follow "Laptop in u..." but jumped.
OK, re-type: Laptop in use for over 2 years with other OS, no problem.

Any suggestions? Tnx

[M4he]

I'm running Mint KDE on a MacBook and the sensitivity for multitouch (e.g. two-finger scrolling) was insane out of the box too. Unfortunately even the lowest setting in KDE's touchpad preferences was too sensitive. I solved this by configuring the touchpad driver manually.

I created a file /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/51-synaptics-user.conf with the following content:

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Section "InputClass"
	Identifier "touchpad catchall"
	Driver "synaptics"
	MatchIsTouchpad "on"
	Option "TapButton1" "0"
	Option "TapButton2" "0"
	Option "TapButton3" "0"
	Option "VertScrollDelta" "-111"
	Option "HorizScrollDelta" "-111"
	Option "VertEdgeScroll" "0"
	Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "1"
	Option "FingerHigh" "60"
	Option "FingerLow" "1"
	Option "PalmDetect" "1"
EndSection

You may want to try creating a similar config. It applies after reboot (please see note at the bottom of this post!) You may also omit any of the values displayed above, if you are uncertain. Their default values will be used instead if you do so.

However, you can play around with above mentioned values beforehand on a running system by using commands like:

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synclient FingerHigh=40

This will apply values temporarily until reboot, so you can play around with them and adjust your config file.

Some remarks to the values above:

• *ScrollDelta values determine the speed for multifinger scrolling
• negative values for *ScrollDelta enable inverted (natural) scrolling, use positive values if you don't want that
• PalmDetect tries to block touchpad input while typing if your palm touches the touchpad - this might fix your cursor jumping while typing
• TapButtonX toggles tap-to-click functionality

You can find further explanations for all possible values here.

If you still have problems with your cursor jumping around while typing you can try using syndaemon as illustrated here.

NOTE: KDE might try to override those settings at startup. To prevent this, you might have to uninstall kde-touchpad via

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sudo apt-get remove kde-touchpad

[norm.h]

Resurrecting this thread because I'm trying to reduce the sensitivity of my touchpad.

I've followed the procedure detailed HERE to no avail, because when I run synclient I get

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normh@normh-nspire2 ~ $ synclient
Parameter settings:
    LeftEdge                = 1642
    RightEdge               = 5406
    TopEdge                 = 1384
    BottomEdge              = 4610
    FingerLow               = 25
    FingerHigh              = 30 

Which shows the FingerHigh hasn't changed, even though I set it to 100.
Is the command to make the changed file "executable" correct, or is there something else wrong with the given procedure?

Running Mint 18.2 Mate.