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Re: syndaemon-netbsd : a program to disable a synaptics-compatible trackpad while typing



Hey,

Thanks for sharing this! Dealing with palm-press trackpad jumps on a ThinkPad is incredibly annoying, so this is definitely a welcome for anyone running NetBSD on a laptop.

The finger_high sysctl trick is a pretty clever workaround to bypass the driver interpretation entirely. One quick question on how you're handling it: since writing to sysctl knobs usually requires root, does the daemon have to run with elevated privileges? Running an X-centric tool as root can be a bit sketchy security-wise, so I'm curious if you've looked into separating the X11 listener from the actual sysctl call, or using a small suid helper.

Also, out of curiosity, did you run into issues trying to use user-space tools like xinput or wsconsctl to toggle the device? I know if you're using the generic wscons driver it tends to multiplex everything into one stream, which makes isolating just the trackpad a massive pain—assuming that's why you went the kernel route.

Either way, nice work getting this up.

Cheers,

Aryabhata 

On Tue, 26 May, 2026, 3:43 am thezerobit, <thezerobit%posteo.com@localhost> wrote:
Hi,
I hacked syndaemon to work on NetBSD. Codeberg page:
https://codeberg.org/thezerobit/syndaemon-netbsd . Direct download:
https://codeberg.org/thezerobit/syndaemon-netbsd/archive/main.tar.gz

If you don't know what syndaemon is, it's a little daemon that pays
attention to keyboard activity in X and disables the trackpad while you
are typing. This is to prevent unintentional mouse movements and clicks
on laptop trackpads located just below the keyboard. This is pretty much
essential when working on my Thinkpad T580. There is a README.txt in the
repo which explains how to compile and use the tool.

The reason this is a bit of a hack is that the only way to safely
disable the trackpad that I could find was to set the sysctl variable
"hw.synaptics.finger_high" to a high enough value that the driver no
longer registers interaction. Feel free to contact me directly with
feedback or suggestions on how to improve it or if you need help getting
it working.

-thezerobit


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