Button to disable MacBook Pro touchpad

[self-defence]

Hi,

I was wondering if there is any way that I could setup my Ubuntu so that if I plug in my mouse or if I get a bluetooth mouse the touchpad is deactivated.
Or if that can't be done if I could just setup a button (like F12) to turn on and off the touchpad.

I know it's a stretch, but if anyone has got any ideas their welcome.

Thanks for the help and bye.

[wh0rd]

Here's a great tutorial to do just that:

http://lifehacker.com/photogallery/Top-10-Gnome-Tweaks/2424591

[self-defence]

Cool thanks for the link. At least now the pad is inactive when I'm typing so thanks. :)

Bye

[russo.mic]

You could fairly easily write a simple script to do just with with synclient.

[self-defence]

You mean something in the line when I press F12 it runs a script that checks if pad is on or off and does the exacts opposite? Ok the first part I'm parity sure I know how to do and the last part also (what command to run if pad=0 ... synclient something=1 else if pad=1 synclient something=1) but I have no idea on exactly how I would do this.
Any suggestions?

Thanks for your help. :)

Bye

[Arthur Archnix]

I just posted about this here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4177125#post4177125

I suppose the auto-disable might not work with a blue tooth device mouse, but you could always just create a second shortcut to disable the mouse, like <shift>F10 enables touchpad, <Control>F10> disables it. More info in the link above.

[self-defence]

Cool, thank you for the info.
It's exactly what I need. :)

Good night

[freejonah]

this is my first posting. I just got my first Macbook Pro dual booting with Ubuntu, and I love it. The only thing that has driven me crazy has been this Touchpad. I've been wanting to turn it off forever, so my friend showed me this forum, and I found your posting.

I added the line to xorg.config, and dropped a variation of your syndaemon command into my .tcshrc:

/usr/bin/syndaemon -d -i 100000

This disables the touchpad for about 27 hours ( a long time ) after you first stop typing. By the way, it looks like tapping on the big touchpad button reactivates it until the next time you type. That's a nice safety.

Also, it seems like if you're really interested in kicking the touchpad out of the park for good, you can add this option to the synaptics driver:

Option "TouchpadOff" "1"

[cyberdork33]

Make it automatic when plugging unplugging a mouse:
http://linuxtidbits.wordpress.com/2007/10/27/switch-automatically-mouse-and-touchpad/

[self-defence]

Cool I'll give it a try when I get a few moments of spare time. For now the not active when typing thing seems to be working quite ok for me since I most had problems with the touchpad when I was typing.

Bye