Make XBMC 12.x and newer work with a touch screen

[Till Kamppeter]

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad Twist convertible ultrabook. The tablet mode (touchscreen-only operation, keyboard folded away) get continuously working better.

Now I have hit a problem with XBMC: When using XBMC in full-screen mode when tapping on the screen, the mouse cursor jumps into the lower right corner and so the taps on GUI elements do not get recognized. Operating with keyboard or external mouse works correctly and after closing XBMC the touchscreen works correctly again. Using the built-in touchpad of a laptop the cursor is too fast.

A workaround (perhaps a fix) for both the touchscreen and touchpad problems is adding

export SDL_MOUSE_RELATIVE=0

right before the call of xbmc.bin in the /usr/bin/xbmc script.

See also my upstream bug report:

http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/14300

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

With this workaround/fix watching TV and videos on my Twist works great with touch operation, only missing part is context menus (see bug 1212736).

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

I have discovered now how to get the right-click context menus: See bug 1212736, comment #7, but it is not very intuitive.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Martinique (martinique)]

I don't know if this is directly related, but after upgrading to Ubuntu 14.04 and XBMC 13 (Gotham) beta on a touchscreen computer (Asus EeeTop, IDC 6681 touchscreen), XBMC went all crazy. It behaved as if someone was holding down an arrow key, with focus jumping between elements and the associated sound effect repeating. The only way to stop it was to kill xbmc.bin.

I found out that it only happened when joystick/gamepad support was enabled, so I guess XBMC thought the touchscreen was a joystick. As the GUI was inaccessible, I had to edit the following line in ~/.xbmc/userdata/guisettings.xml.
Default:
<enablejoystick default="true">true</enablejoystick>
New:
<enablejoystick default="true">false</enablejoystick>

This other touchscreen issue still remains.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

In kodi 15.1 this problem is solved.