How to disable the touchpad in a few steps. A simple guide for those who own a notebook or laptop and want to work only with the mouse.
What is the touchpad? The touchpad is an input device sensitive to the movement of the fingers that is located on the palm rest of the laptop. The touchpad simulates the left and right mouse buttons and is able to replace it.
If you have a notebook or laptop and want to activate or deactivate the touchpad on Windows 10, to use only the mouse, in this tutorial you will find out which commands will help you do it.
All you have to do is keep reading, I’m sure at the end of the reading you will have seen how to disable the touchpad.
How to deactivate the touchpad
If you have Windows 10, deactivating the notebook touchpad is very simple. First of all, make sure you have the mouse connected or you will not be able to use your PC anymore.
Now that you can move with the mouse, in the search box, type Device Manager. In other versions of Windows, you can directly select Management Devices from the Control Panel.
Once you have the Device Manager window in front of you, double-click on the Mouse and other pointing devices item. Under this heading you will find the touchpad. Click on it with the right mouse button and in the pop-up menu select Disable device.
If you want to reactivate it in the future, just follow the steps described above and in the pop-up menu select Enable device.
With Windows 10 you can also disable the touchpad from Settings> Devices> Touchpad.
On the right column click on Additional Settings, in the window that appears choose the Hardware tab and press the Properties button.
Then go to the Driver tab and press the Disable Device button. Press OK to confirm.
Another solution to disable Windows 10 touchpad is from the clock icon. On some notebooks you can see the touchpad icon that you can enable or disable, on others, however, you have a key on the keyboard that allows you to activate or disable the touchpad. On Acer laptops, for example, the key combination is Fn + F7, on the Asus Fn + F9, while on the Lenovo is F5.
Asus Smart Gesture
If you have an Asus laptop there is a feature that can be activated by an icon located next to the Windows clock, called ASUS Smart Gesture that allows you to disable the touchpad.
By double clicking on the ASUS Smart Gesture icon, a window will open where you can, in the Mouse Tracking tab, check the item Disable the touchpad when connecting the mouse.
Click on Apply and then on OK.
How to disable the trackpad on Mac
The equivalent of the touchpad on Mac is the trackpad. If you want to find out how to disable the trackpad on Mac you have to click on the apple symbol at the top and then click on System Preferences to enter the settings of your Mac. Alternatively you can reach the settings of the trackpad also through the gear symbol in the dock of app.
From System Preferences click on Accessibility and then on the next screen on Mouse and trackpad.
Check the Ignore the integrated trackpad when the mouse or wireless trackpad is present to disable the trackpad. Uncheck to activate the trackpad on Mac.