How to disable the touchpad on a laptop?

Touchpads can be very annoying sometimes. When you are writing on a laptop keyboard your palm starts touching the touchpad unknowingly. It makes the mouse cursor move and it may also lead to misclicks. For that reason, it is always better to disable the touchpad while writing on a laptop keyboard.

But how to do it?

Today you will get the answer to this problem. It is not very difficult to disable touchpads on laptops. Mostly the setting to disable the touchpad is just some clicks away.

Disable Touchpad through laptop keyboard

Nowadays, most keyboard manufacturers provide a touchpad disabling/enabling option on the keyboard itself. If you look on your keyboard, the upmost row of the keys will be function keys. These keys from F1 to F12 have different functions to perform such as pause/play, sound on/off, volume up, volume down, and display setting and you may also find a touchpad disabling/enabling key there. To disable the touchpad using function keys, you will have to press a combination of two keys. One key will be the one from F1-F12 keys, the one which has a touchpad logo on it. The other will be labeled as the “fn” key on your keyboard. The combination of function keys and “fn” helps you access all the features present in the upmost row.

Disable the touchpad in Windows 8 and Windows 10

Using a mouse and keyboard

1. Press “Windows key”, and type touchpad in the search bar.
2. In the touchpad setting window, toggle the touchpad switch off.

If you have somehow disabled the touchpad, but you don’t have a mouse. Then use the method given below to enable the touchpad.

Using a keyboard only

1. Press “Windows key”, and type touchpad in the search bar.
2. In the touchpad settings window, press Tab until the touchpad toggle switch is selected.
3. Press the spacebar to toggle the switch on/off.

Disable the touchpad in Windows 7 and earlier

Using a mouse and keyboard

1. Press the “Windows key”, type Control Panel, and then press Enter.
2. Select Hardware and Sound.
3. Under device and printers, select Mouse.
4. In the Mouse Properties window, select the tab labeled touchpad, clickpad, or something similar.
5. There should be an option for enabling and disabling the touchpad. Use it to enable it or disable it.

Using a keyboard only

1. Press the “Windows key”, type Control Panel, and then press Enter.
2. Use your keyboard to select Hardware and Sound.
3. Use your keyboard to get to the Mouse section which you will find under the same device and printers.
4. Use CTRL+TAB to toggle to the touchpad this time, it is a bit different from Windows 8 and 10.
5. Use the keyboard to navigate to the checkbox and to toggle off/on using the spacebar as usual.

Note: Do not disable the touchpad if you do not have a mouse, you will somehow get to enable the touchpad using your keyboard but it will be a little tricky as I have described above.