Fixing ALPS touchpad double tapping and dragging on Ubuntu

This post is for historical value, an updated guide is posted here. Check that out instead. The option you wanna change is MaxTapTime.

  • You installed (x)/(k)/(l)/Ubuntu on your laptop with an ALPS touchpad
  • Everything works except dragging by double tapping, because it expects you to tap faster than possible

This is an easy fix that was fairly difficult to discover.

Open a terminal (ctrl+alt+t) and paste in:

synclient MaxTapTime=400

Now try tapping and dragging, and you should see that it is much more reasonable. 400 represents a value in milliseconds as the allowed time between taps. By default, I believe it’s around 110, which is inhuman. After playing around with it, I ended up with a preferred value around 240ms. This seems to be the sweet spot where you don’t double tap on accident and it still works as intended.

To autostart  on Ubuntu and Xubuntu respectively:

  • Open the dash and type “start” and open the Application Autostart menu. Paste in synclient MaxTapTime=240 for the command, and whatever you want for the title and description. Apply changes and exit.
  • Click the menu and go to Session and Startup. Paste in synclient MaxTapTime=240 for the command, and whatever you want for the title and description. Apply changes and exit.

Source/more information

Tested on Ubuntu and Xubuntu 12.04 and 12.10

Leave a comment