Xfce Forum

luke.ve

Member

Registered: 2023-01-03

Posts: 3

How to enable Fn+F3 touchpad key?

Hello everybody.
In my laptop (as in many others, I guess) the key "fn"+"F3" is supposed to enable/disable the touchpad.
This works in GNOME (tested with Ubuntu) however it does not work with XFCE (tested with Peppermint).

I found a similar issue here, with no answer:
https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=7060

Please notice that most of other "fn" keys do work, e.g. "fn"+arrows for brightness and volume, or "fn"+"f6" for enabling and disabling the webcam.

Any idea? Thank you.

Luca

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,485

Re: How to enable Fn+F3 touchpad key?

Hello and welcome.

Is Fn+F3 recognized by your system? To check, try creating a shortcut to open thunar via Fn+F3. If it is recognized, you can bind an xfconf-query command to the shortcut to enable/disable the touchpad.

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luke.ve

Member

Registered: 2023-01-03

Posts: 3

Re: How to enable Fn+F3 touchpad key?

Yes, the shortcut is recognised, I just checked it. How should I use xfconf-query command ?

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,485

Re: How to enable Fn+F3 touchpad key?

In a terminal window, run the following command:

xfconf-query -c pointers -m | awk '{print $2}'

...and then go to Mouse and Touchpad and uncheck the "Enabled" switch. You should get something like this to display in the terminal window:

/SynPS2_Synaptics_TouchPad/Properties/Device_Enabled

Then write a script like this:

 #!/bin/sh

TP="/SynPS2_Synaptics_TouchPad/Properties/Device_Enabled"
state=$(xfconf-query -c pointers -p "$TP" -v)

if [ $state == 1 ] ; then
xfconf-query -c pointers -p "$TP" -s 0
else
xfconf-query -c pointers -p "$TP" -s 1
fi

exit 0

...and make sure to change the value of TP to equal the output from the command above.

Make the script executable, and create a Fn+F3 keyboard shortcut that points to this script. This should toggle the touchpad.

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luke.ve

Member

Registered: 2023-01-03

Posts: 3

Re: How to enable Fn+F3 touchpad key?

Nice, thank you.

I hoped that XFCE had something more ready-to-use.

Last edited by luke.ve (2023-01-16 17:44:06)