HOWTO: enable circular scrolling on synaptics touchpads

[MONODA]

This tutorial will show you how to give your touchpad on your laptop the ability to scroll up and down using a circular motion on the touchpad. this is similar to vertical and horizontal scrolling. You will have to edit your xorg.conf file so if you do not feel comfortable doing this then do not continue this tutorial.
ok so let's start:

first you need to make sure that the driver for your touchpad on your laptop is synaptics (it should be). To find out whether it is or not, do the following:

sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

and search for :

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"

if you find this section (the Identifier may be bamed something else but as long as the driver is synaptics, you are good) then continue if not, do not.

at the end of this section, add:

Option "CircularScrolling" "on"
Option "CircScrollTrigger" "2"

so that it looks like:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "HorizEdgeScroll" "0"
Option "CircularScrolling" "on"
Option "CircScrollTrigger" "2"
EndSection

Option "CircularScrolling" "on" turns circular scrolling on, and Option "CircScrollTrigger" "2" selects the edge which should be the trigger. Meaning that if I set it to 2 then circular scrolling will be activated when I put my finger at edge 2. This is the translation from numbers to edges:

0 any edge
1 top edge
2 top right corner
3 right edge
4 bottom right corner
5 bottom edge
6 bottom left corner
7 left edge
8 top left corner

the way you use it is similar to an ipod, clockwise motions on the touchpad will scroll downwards while counterclockwise will scroll upwards.

once you have done this, restart X with ctrl+alt+backspace. be sure to save all your work and exit all apps first. hope it works for you.

[MONODA]

so does this work for everyone?

[graingert]

Briliant!

[MONODA]

thanks i thought that no one would try it.

[DynamicStu]

This is really excellent! Thanks.

My wife hates the vertical scrolling that defaults with the touchpad. I'm going to show her this, and hopefully she'll find out the convenience of not having to click on the scrollbar!

[chmac]

Any idea what to do on Intrepid (Ubuntu 8.10) where the xorg.conf is empty by default?

[sharon.gmc]

wow! thank you. . . this is a mine. . . .

[gogreenpower]

didnt work for me using 8.10, vertical and horizontal work fine but no circular

[chmac]

didnt work for me using 8.10, vertical and horizontal work fine but no circular

Did you create an xorg.conf? Or did you upgrade from 8.04 and so it was already there for you?

I think the default in 8.10 is an empty xorg.conf.

[gogreenpower]

i upgraded from 8.04 but i set the scroll trigger to 6 and it wasn't working but when i put it back to 2 it worked? not to annoying just wanted it to start at the bottom left