GNOME Desktop: This article explains how to automatically disable the laptop touchpad when an external mouse is connected and how to disable the touchpad as you type.

The GNOME Settings app has several options for mice and touchpads, including adjusting speed, natural scrolling, and more. From there you can even permanently deactivate the touchpad. However, there is no way to directly disable the laptop touchpad when using an external mouse or the touchpad when typing in Settings.

However, there are settings to enable these two very useful options, although they won’t show up in the Settings app. For the following instructions to work, you must be using the GNOME shell desktop and libinput.

How to automatically disable the touchpad when a mouse is connected (GNOME)

To deactivate the touchpad when an external mouse is connected and to reactivate the touchpad when the mouse is disconnected, you can either use the Dconf editor or a command.

But before you do that, I recommend tweaking your touchpad settings in Settings ->  Mouse & Touchpad. That’s because As soon as we enable the option to disable the touchpad while using a mouse, the touchpad settings from the Settings app will no longer be available (The touchpad appears disabled even though it is enabled if no external mouse is detected; you can configure the touchpad settings again after enabling).

Deactivate the touchpad in the Dconf editor when you connect an external mouse by clicking to. walk / org / gnome / desktop / peripherals / touchpad, click on send-events, disable the Use default value toggle, then select 'disabled-on-external-mouse' as the Custom value. Finally, click on that Apply Button at the bottom of the Dconf editor window (this button only appears after you have made changes).

If you want to undo this, just enable the Use default value Opportunity.

You can also disable the touchpad when a mouse is connected by running the following command:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad send-events disabled-on-external-mouse

In case you want to undo this and permanently activate your touchpad, you can use the following command:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad send-events enabled

You can also set it to disabled to disable it completely.

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Alternative: This option does not work on every laptop or mouse, at least not some time ago. If it doesn’t work for you, try it Touchpad display as alternative (available in a PPA for Ubuntu / Linux Mint and im GOLD for Arch-Linux / Manjaro; on other Linux distributions you have to install it from the source).

The touchpad display also allows you to disable the touchpad when a mouse is connected, but it also provides a few other functions, such as:

To access the touchpad display icon from the GNOME Shell control panel, you must use the KStatusNotifierItem / AppIndicator support Extension or something similar (this is installed by default on Ubuntu).

There is also a Touchpad display GNOME Shell extension (in its description it mentions that it supports up to GNOME Shell 3.36) which tries to achieve the same thing. Wayland is not supported.

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How to disable the touchpad while typing (GNOME)

Disabling the touchpad as you type is another option that isn’t directly available in the GNOME Shell system preferences, but you can enable it using the GNOME Tweaks application.

The option to disable the touchpad while typing is in Tweaks under. available Keyboard & Mouse. You should find them there Touchpad Section, and directly below there is the option to Disable While Typing.

You can also deactivate the touchpad while entering data with the Dconf editor (/ org / gnome / desktop / peripherals / touchpad / disable-while-typing) or with a command:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad disable-while-typing true

If you want to undo this and don’t want to disable the touchpad as you type, use:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad disable-while-typing false

Related: Hushboard mutes your microphone while typing