How do I simulate a mouse click by applying pressure on the touchpad?

st0n3r

12/1/23, 7:43 PM

I was wondering if it was possible to click the mouse without really clicking by applying a certain amount of pressure on the touchpad. I understand that we can detect the pressure of a touch with libinput or evdev but how do I use these to trigger a mouse event? I suppose a very naive approach would be to run a loop that detects the touch pressure and if it crosses a certain level, use xdotool to create a mouse click event. Is there a better way of doing this and if so, how do I go about it?

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libinput

earthmeLon

12/1/23, 7:51 PM

You can enable "Tap to Click" functionality on your trackpad, which would mean if you tap it, it creates click inputs. Do you have a different goal in mind?

st0n3r

12/1/23, 8:44 PM

@earthmeLon I apologise for the poorly worded question. What I meant was, while I'm moving my finger across the trackpad, if the pressure ever crosses a certain pressure value, I want it to trigger a click. I already have tap to click enabled. The way it works right now, while I'm moving my finger across the trackpad, if I want to click something I have to lift my finger and then tap. I'd like to skip the lift and tap bit.

kanehekili

12/1/23, 10:53 PM

Very efficient request. But that feature would have to be realized on the driver level, otherwise its behaviour would be too sluggish. And it depends on your hardware (aka touchpad) whether it provides "pressure" data. The [libinput library](https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/bionic/man1/libinput-measure-touchpad-pressure.1.html) can be used for evaluating this

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