Disable the Trackpad/Touchpad on Mac and PC

It can be annoying when the cursor jumps

If you like using a mouse to get work done on your Mac or Windows laptop, then you might find it useful to disable the trackpad or touchpad on your system. This is really useful if you type a lot and the trackpad is located in a spot on your laptop that causes it to always pick up slight movements from your hand while typing.

It can be really annoying if you are typing something and all of a sudden the cursor jumps to another part of the document! In this article, I’ll show you the different ways to disable the touchpad on OS X, Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Disable Trackpad OS X Mountain Lion

If you’re running the latest version of OS X and you have a bluetooth or USB mouse connected, you can have OS X ignore the trackpad by going toSystem Preferencesand then clicking onAccessibility.

Then scroll down to Mouse and Trackpad and check theIgnore built-in trackpad when mouse or wireless trackpad is presentbox.

Disable Trackpad on Windows

In Windows 7 and Windows 8, there are a couple of different ways you can disable the trackpad depending on how your system is configured. The first way you want to check is to see if there is a special button on the keyboard or switch on your laptop to disable the trackpad. For example, this is the key on a Dell laptop. You have to press the Function key and the trackpad button to enable/disable it.

If you don’t have the button or the switch, the next way to disable the touchpad is to go toMouseproperties from Control Panel and check if there is aDevice SettingsorTouchpadtab.

Click on the Disable button and you’re good to go. If you don’t see the Device Settings tab in Mouse Properties, that means you don’t have the proper drivers installed or the full software for the trackpad. Go to the manufacturers website and download the full driver package.

Lastly, you can open up Device Manager from Control Panel, expandMouse and other pointing devicesand then disable the touchpad if it is listed there.

Everything is the same when disabling the trackpad in Windows 8 also. Of course in Windows 8, your trackpad may not even work unless you have the latest drivers! Synaptics still hasn’t released a Windows 8 generic Touchpad driver yet, so keep an eye out for that if you have a Synaptics touchpad on your laptop. Enjoy!

Founder of Help Desk Geek and managing editor. He began blogging in 2007 and quit his job in 2010 to blog full-time. He has over 15 years of industry experience in IT and holds several technical certifications.Read Aseem’s Full Bio

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Disable the Trackpad/Touchpad on Mac and PC#

Disable Trackpad OS X Mountain Lion#

Disable Trackpad on Windows#