jonathandandries / macbookubuntutrackpad

Makes Macbook's Force Touch Trackpad less annoying in dual booted Ubuntu.

Macbook Force Touch Trackpad tuning for Ubuntu

What is it

If you are dual booting the Macbook to Ubuntu, chance is that your god-like touchpad is now getting more and more annoying for various reasons. (This proves that Apple engineer did excellent job on both hardware and software together.)

For touchpad lovers like me this is not acceptable. Luckily Ubuntu's Synaptic driver and its corresponding synclient allows tuning of various parameters.

Some settings might differ from person to person, even so this might be a good starting point for further tweaking. This settings tried to get the touchpad working in Ubuntu as close to OSX as possible. However there are some flaws that I did not address yet.

This is for Macbook with Force Touch trackpad, if you wish to use it with earlier Macbooks, you might want all the TapButton to be 1 to enable tapping.

Improvements from the default Ubuntu settings

• Palm checking turned on.
• Palm checking sensitivity changed so that you can use the side of your thumb to move the mouse while in touch typing position without the driver consider that as a palm, while the thumb in arching position. When resting your thumb fully, it will be considered a palm as I believed this is not a typing hand shape.
• Tap to click all turned off, as Force Touch trackpad uses the force-feedback click.
• Two finger click works as right click, Three finger click works as middle click. (Three finger to paste from highlighted text without hitting copy command)
• Edge scrolling all turned off.
• Two finger scrolling turned on for both axis.
• Scolling is reversed to "natural scroll"
• Scrolling speed and inertia/friction is reduced to be more like in OSX.

Installation

1. Clone or download the repo so you have the 50-synaptics.conf file.
2. Make sure /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ directory exist. Copy the file to that directory. (symlinking does not work)
3. Restart and see if it works or not. (Or try synclient command and see if the values corresponds to that in the .conf file.
4. If it is not working, GNOME might be overriding your configuration. Download and use dconf-editor

sudo apt-get install dconf-editor

Then dig down the tree to org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.mouse and deactivate the active option.

Missing

• Two finger gesture to forward-backward in web browser. Might require more plugins.
• Go adjust pointer speed separately to your taste in Mouse and Touchpad settings. It is not included in this script.
• When palm detection activates, your mouse is disabled until you lifted the touch. In OSX, palm detection runs continuously and seamlessly transition between states without lifting finger.
• Two finger scrolling is not as fine as in OSX. In OSX, scrolling a webpage is a bliss, as the webpage responds exactly to your finger as if you are really grabbing the page. In Ubuntu, scrolling moting seemes to translate to discreet number of certain steps. (You will notice this when scrolling slowly.)
• Ubuntu has noticable delay of two finger scrolling. Try two-finger flicking the webpage, it is far less satisfying than in OSX.