Switch Automatically Mouse and Touchpad

I’ve been working for a bit on creating a script that can switch the touchpad on and off for better use with the mouse. Now by using a mouse I don’t have to keep my hands propped to avoid contact with the touchpad when I type. A while back I showed the users the script I had used to do this, but there turns out to be even a simpler-means to do it.

Before I was required to open the terminal to run the script, but using udev is much easier.

Udev processes inputs and can trigger actions or even run programs at the trigger. Once I learned the right lines to write into a udev rule, the toggling of mouse and touchpad is self-acting.

Open a new rule

vim /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules

This should be able to work on basically on any PC.

ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="input", ID_CLASS="mouse", RUN+="/usr/bin/synclient TouchpadOff=1"
ACTION==”remove”, SUBSYSTEM==”input”, ID_CLASS=”mouse”, RUN+=”/home/todd/.scripts/mouse-touchpad-toggle-on”

A person could just use synclient again to switch on the touchpad once more, but I used syndaemon to enforce a typebreak after keypresses. With this I am able to type and not have a flying cursor everywhere .

Udev seems picky about using variables and “if” statements and such. So the script is basic:

#!/bin/bash
synclient TouchpadOff=0 MaxTapTime=0;
syndaemon -i 1 -d

When now the mouse is inserted the touchpad is deactivated and activated once more when the mouse is unplugged.

• Udev Priniciples