If you enjoy using your mouse with your Mac or Windows laptop, you might find it helpful to disable the trackpad or touchpad on your system. This is really useful if you type a lot and the trackpad is positioned in such a place on your laptop that it always picks up the light movement of your hand while typing.
It can be very annoying if you are typing something and the cursor suddenly jumps to another part of the document! In this article, I will show you various ways to disable the touchpad in OS X, Windows 7 and Windows 8.
Disable OS X Mountain Lion trackpad
Trackpad OS X Mountain Lion is disabled
If you have the latest version of OS X installed and have a mouse connected via Bluetooth or USB, you can make OS X ignore the trackpad by going to System Preferences and clicking Accessibility.
Then scroll down to the Mouse & Trackpad section and select the Ignore built-in trackpad when I have a mouse or wireless trackpad checkbox.
– /
Disable trackpad on Windows
Disable trackpad on Windows
Windows 7 and Windows 8 have a few different ways to disable the trackpad depending on how your system is configured. The first way is to check if there is a dedicated button on the keyboard or to turn on the laptop to disable the trackpad. For example, this is a key on a Dell laptop. You have to press the function key and trackpad button to turn it on / off.
If you don’t have a button or switch, the next way to disable the touchpad is to go to Mouse Properties in the control panel and check if there is a Device Settings or Touchpad tab.
Click the Disable button and you’re done. If you do not see the Device Settings tab in the mouse properties, it means that you do not have the appropriate drivers or complete trackpad software installed. Go to the manufacturer’s website and download the complete driver package.
Finally, you can open Device Manager from Control Panel, expand Mouse and Other Pointing Devices, and then disable the touchpad if it’s listed there.
It’s the same with disabling the trackpad in Windows 8. Of course, in Windows 8, your trackpad might not even work unless you have the latest drivers installed! Synaptics hasn’t released a generic touchpad driver for Windows 8 yet, so keep an eye out if your laptop has a Synaptics touchpad. Enjoy!
–