Debugging touchpad pressure/size ranges

Touchpad pressure/size ranges depend on Device quirks entry specific to each laptop model. To check if a pressure/size range is already defined for your device, use the libinput quirks tool:

$ libinput quirks list /dev/input/event19

If your device does not list any quirks, it probably needs a touch pressure/size range, a palm threshold and a thumb threshold. Start with Debugging touchpad pressure ranges, then Debugging touch size ranges. The respective tools will exit if the required axis is not supported.

Debugging touchpad pressure ranges

This section describes how to determine the touchpad pressure ranges required for a touchpad device and how to add the required Device quirks locally. Note that the quirk is not public API and may change at any time. Users are advised to report a bug with the updated pressure ranges when testing has completed.

Note

Most distributions ship libinput measure in a separate libinput-utils package.

Use the libinput measure touchpad-pressure tool provided by libinput. This tool will search for your touchpad device and print some pressure statistics, including whether a touch is/was considered logically down.

Note

This tool will only work on touchpads with pressure.

Example output of the tool is below:

$ sudo libinput measure touchpad-pressure
Using Synaptics TM2668-002: /dev/input/event21

This is an interactive tool

Place a single finger on the touchpad to measure pressure values.
Check that:
- touches subjectively perceived as down are tagged as down
- touches with a thumb are tagged as thumb
- touches with a palm are tagged as palm

If the touch states do not match the interaction, re-run
with --touch-thresholds=down:up using observed pressure values.
See --help for more options.

Press Ctrl+C to exit

+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Thresh |   70   |  60  |  130   |  100   |                                    |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Touch  |  down  |  up  |  palm  | thumb  | min  | max  | p  | avg  |  median  |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|  178   |   x    |  x   |        |        |  75  |  75  | 0  |  75  |    75    |
|  179   |   x    |  x   |        |        |  35  |  88  | 0  |  77  |    81    |
|  180   |   x    |  x   |        |   x    |  65  | 113  | 0  |  98  |    98    |
|  181   |   x    |  x   |        |   x    |  50  | 101  | 0  |  86  |    90    |
|  182   |   x    |  x   |        |        |  40  |  80  | 0  |  66  |    70    |
|  183   |   x    |      |        |        |  43  |  78  | 78 |                 |
...

The example output shows five completed touch sequences and one ongoing one. For each, the respective minimum and maximum pressure values are printed as well as some statistics. The down column show that each sequence was considered logically down at some point, two of the sequences were considered thumbs. This is an interactive tool and its output may change frequently. Refer to the libinput-measure-touchpad-pressure(1) man page for more details.

By default, this tool uses the Device quirks for the pressure range. To narrow down on the best values for your device, specify the ‘logically down’ and ‘logically up’ pressure thresholds with the --touch-thresholds argument:

$ sudo libinput measure touchpad-pressure --touch-thresholds=10:8 --palm-threshold=20

Interact with the touchpad and check if the output of this tool matches your expectations.

Note

This is an interactive process. You will need to re-run the tool with varying thresholds until you find the right range for your touchpad. Attaching output logs to a bug will not help, only you with access to the hardware can figure out the correct ranges.

Once the thresholds are decided on (e.g. 10 and 8), they can be enabled with Device quirks entry similar to this:

$> cat /etc/libinput/local-overrides.quirks
[Touchpad pressure override]
MatchUdevType=touchpad
MatchName=*SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad
MatchDMIModalias=dmi:*svnLENOVO:*:pvrThinkPadX230*
AttrPressureRange=10:8

The file name must be /etc/libinput/local-overrides.quirks. The The first line is the section name and can be free-form. The Match directives limit the quirk to your touchpad, make sure the device name matches your device’s name (see libinput record’s output). The dmi modalias match should be based on the information in /sys/class/dmi/id/modalias. This modalias should be shortened to the specific system’s information, usually system vendor (svn) and product name (pn).

Once in place, run the following command to verify the quirk is valid and works for your device:

$ sudo libinput list-quirks /dev/input/event10
AttrPressureRange=10:8

Replace the event node with the one from your device. If the AttrPressureRange quirk does not show up, re-run with --verbose and check the output for any error messages.

If the pressure range quirk shows up correctly, restart X or the Wayland compositor and libinput should now use the correct pressure thresholds. The Helper tools can be used to verify the correct functionality first without the need for a restart.

Once the pressure ranges are deemed correct, report a bug to get the pressure ranges into the repository.

Debugging touch size ranges

This section describes how to determine the touchpad size ranges required for a touchpad device and how to add the required Device quirks locally. Note that the quirk is not public API and may change at any time. Users are advised to report a bug with the updated pressure ranges when testing has completed.

Note

Most distributions ship libinput measure in a separate libinput-utils package.

Use the libinput measure touch-size tool provided by libinput. This tool will search for your touchpad device and print some touch size statistics, including whether a touch is/was considered logically down.

Note

This tool will only work on touchpads with the ABS_MT_MAJOR axis.

Example output of the tool is below:

$ sudo libinput measure touch-size --touch-thresholds 10:8 --palm-threshold 14
Using ELAN Touchscreen: /dev/input/event5
&nbsp;
Ready for recording data.
Touch sizes used: 10:8
Palm size used: 14
Place a single finger on the device to measure touch size.
Ctrl+C to exit
&nbsp;
Sequence: major: [  9.. 11] minor: [  7..  9]
Sequence: major: [  9.. 10] minor: [  7..  7]
Sequence: major: [  9.. 14] minor: [  6..  9]  down
Sequence: major: [ 11.. 11] minor: [  9..  9]  down
Sequence: major: [  4.. 33] minor: [  1..  5]  down palm

The example output shows five completed touch sequences. For each, the respective minimum and maximum pressure values are printed as well as some statistics. The down and palm tags show that sequence was considered logically down or a palm at some point. This is an interactive tool and its output may change frequently. Refer to the libinput-measure-touch-size(1) man page for more details.

By default, this tool uses the Device quirks for the touch size range. To narrow down on the best values for your device, specify the ‘logically down’ and ‘logically up’ pressure thresholds with the --touch-thresholds arguments as in the example above.

Interact with the touchpad and check if the output of this tool matches your expectations.

Note

This is an interactive process. You will need to re-run the tool with varying thresholds until you find the right range for your touchpad. Attaching output logs to a bug will not help, only you with access to the hardware can figure out the correct ranges.

Once the thresholds are decided on (e.g. 10 and 8), they can be enabled with Device quirks entry similar to this:

$> cat /etc/libinput/local-overrides.quirks
[Touchpad touch size override]
MatchUdevType=touchpad
MatchName=*SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad
MatchDMIModalias=dmi:*svnLENOVO:*:pvrThinkPadX230*
AttrTouchSizeRange=10:8

The first line is the match line and should be adjusted for the device name (see libinput record’s output) and for the local system, based on the information in /sys/class/dmi/id/modalias. The modalias should be shortened to the specific system’s information, usually system vendor (svn) and product name (pn).

Once in place, run the following command to verify the quirk is valid and works for your device:

$ sudo libinput list-quirks /dev/input/event10
AttrTouchSizeRange=10:8

Replace the event node with the one from your device. If the AttrTouchSizeRange quirk does not show up, re-run with --verbose and check the output for any error messages.

If the touch size range property shows up correctly, restart X or the Wayland compositor and libinput should now use the correct thresholds. The Helper tools can be used to verify the correct functionality first without the need for a restart.

Once the touch size ranges are deemed correct, Reporting bugs “report a bug” to get the thresholds into the repository.