Touchpad on Laptop Can be Disabled on Accident

[Ian Santopietro]

In the Mouse and Trackpad Settings plugin, there is an option (when a trackpad is present, e.g. on a laptop) to enable or disable the trackpad. This is a dangerous option because if the setting is toggled on a laptop (where the trackpad is the only built-in pointing device) without first plugging in an external mouse, the trackpad which was used to toggle the setting is disabled and cannot be used to re-enable it. This requires one of three solutions:

1. Plugging in an External Mouse to re-enable the setting

2. Using the [TAB] and [SPACE] keys to navigate the UI and get to the switch and toggle it back on

3. Running a gsettings command in the terminal to reset the option

Option 1 may not be available if the user doesn't have an external mouse. Options 2 and 3 aren't discoverable for new users, which can leave someone new to Ubuntu with no way to use their computer.

The gsettings key that is toggle by this widget is:

org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad/send-events

The key accepts the values "enabled", "disabled", and "disabled-on-external-mouse". The third option would be a much better choice for the disabled item, since that still allows use of the trackpad without an external mouse. The wording of the option could also be updated to something similar to: "Disable touchpad automatically when an external mouse is plugged in".

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.10
Package: unity-control-center 15.04.0+15.10.20150923-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.2.0-30.35-generic 4.2.8-ckt3
Uname: Linux 4.2.0-30-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.19.1-0ubuntu5
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Thu Mar 3 09:19:23 2016
SourcePackage: unity-control-center
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to wily on 2016-02-04 (28 days ago)