Activate tap to click on touchpad?

I am using Debian 8.6 LXDE on a Powerbook G4 15″ 1.67GHz and would like to enable tap to click on the touchpad. It is already double scrolling but tap to click would help to save the ageing mouse button. Two fingered tap for left click would be the icing on the cake, is this possible?

Answers:

Thank you for visiting the Q&A section on Magenaut. Please note that all the answers may not help you solve the issue immediately. So please treat them as advisements. If you found the post helpful (or not), leave a comment & I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Method 1

Debian Jessie

To enable the touchpad tapping permanently , copy the 50-synaptics.conf file to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d then edit it by adding Option "TapButton1" "1" .

As root:

mkdir /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
cp /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf

The /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf should be:

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "touchpad catchall"
        Driver "synaptics"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
        Option "TapButton1" "1"
        Option "TapButton2" "3"

Reboot your system

Debian Stretch and Buster (updated)

Remove the xserver-xorg-input-synaptics package. (important)

# apt remove xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

Install xserver-xorg-input-libinput:

# apt install xserver-xorg-input-libinput

In most cases, make sure you have the xserver-xorg-input-libinput package installed, and not the xserver-xorg-input-synaptics package.

As root:

create /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/

mkdir /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d

Create the 40-libinput.conf file:

echo 'Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "libinput touchpad catchall"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
        MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
        Driver "libinput"
        Option "Tapping" "on"
EndSection' > /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/40-libinput.conf

restart your DM; e,g:

# systemctl restart lightdm

or

# systemctl restart gdm3

Debian wiki : Enable tapping on touchpad

Method 2

In recent systems (2017) as many distros are moving to Wayland, synaptics driver is no longer used. Instead, libinput is used.

To enable tap to click on touchpad using libinput create a file in Xorg config:

$ touch /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-synaptics-overrides.conf

And add the following configuration:

Section  "InputClass"
    Identifier  "touchpad overrides"
    Driver "libinput"
    MatchIsTouchpad "on"
    Option "Tapping" "on"
    Option "TappingButtonMap" "lmr"
EndSection

Method 3

This does the trick for me in similar situation under Debian 8.6 and LXDE:

synclient TapButton1=1

Above works if synaptics touchpad work with Synaptics Driver xserver-xorg-input-synaptics.

If you are working with libinput driver (default driver in many live images):

xinput set-prop 'SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad' 'libinput Tapping Enabled' 1

You can use xinput list-props 'SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad' to see all available properties that can be adjusted for your TouchPad.

If your system uses libinput you can use xinput to find out the name of your touchpad device if the above command doesn’t work (they aren’t all Synaptics). For example:

Output for xinput:

⎡ Virtual core pointer                          id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint                  id=11   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                         id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard               id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
↳ Video Bus                                 id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button                              id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
↳ Sleep Button                              id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
↳ Dell WMI hotkeys                          id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]
↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard              id=10   [slave  keyboard (3)]

Command to enable clicking:

xinput set-prop 'AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint' 'libinput Tapping Enabled' 1

Method 4

Using debian Stretch 9.5 with xfce desktop environment .

update : /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/40-libinput.conf

Add this section:

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "libinput touchpad catchall"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
        MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
        Driver "libinput"
        Option "Tapping" "on"
EndSection

Reboot the system and now tapping should work.

Method 5

On Debian 9.1 (stretch) I ran in the same issue (on an asus laptop). I Used LXDE as George.

If you can’t find synclient, install first :

sudo apt install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

Then add the following line at the end of ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE/autostart:

@synclient TapButton1=1 TapButton2=3 TapButton3=2

Reboot and now you can “tap click” and “two fingers tap – right click”

Method 6

This is my synaptic xorg config and works perfectly on Debian 9.7 (stretch) with xserver-xorg-input-synaptics package.

$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-synaptic.conf
Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "touchpad catchall"
    Driver "synaptics"
    MatchIsTouchpad "on"

    ## for natural scrolling
    Option "VertScrollDelta"  "-111"
    Option "HorizScrollDelta" "-111"

    ## tap to click
    Option "TapButton1" "1"

    ## two finger tap to Right click
    Option "TapButton2" "3"
EndSection

Method 7

On Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, the following simple command did the trick:

sudo apt install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

Then reboot (or restart display manager).

Method 8

Tapping and other touchpad settings are configured either through XInput2 as “device properties”, or through Xorg.conf as settings for the ‘libinput’ driver.

Replace Touchpad_Device_Name with the device name (not ID number) that you see in xinput list.

xinput set-prop "Touchpad_Device_Name" "libinput Tapping Enabled" 1

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0