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stephenmyall
Asked: 2012-03-24 03:01:34 +0800 CST

Why does my cursor jump when typing?

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When typing in Ubuntu my cursor jumps around and its not application specific. It doesn't matter or Im filing in a web form, writing an e-mail or using LibreOffice or Lyx. Im using a Sony Vaio 64bit machine.

I read a previous question (link below) on this subject which indicates it may have something to do with the touchpad settings. As this has occurred in previous Ubuntu distros Im guess it is somekind of hardware issue.

cursor

6 Answers

  1. This problem was driving me bonkers too. Finally I went to the Ubuntu Software Center, entered "touchpad" in the search box, found "Synaptiks" touchpad manager and installed it. Set it to start up at boot. Set it to lock touchpad when typing and set the delay time to 2 seconds. My problem is gone. It was so bad that I was looking for a non Ubuntu based distribution to replace the Ubuntu OS I have been using. Now I am very happy again. The old touchpad manager was supposedly sat to lock the touchpad when typing but it really was not. Good luck.

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  2. Try this, it worked for me Lenovo thinkpad L460

    syndaemon -i 3 -d -t -k

    syndaemon monitors keyboard activity and disables the touchpad when the keyboard is being used.

    • -i 3 will wait 3 seconds after the last key press before enabling the touchpad (default is 2.0s).

    • -d starts syndaemon at the background.

    • -t disables tapping and scrolling, not mouse movements, in response to keyboard activity.

    • -k ignores modifier keys when monitoring keyboard activity.

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  3. Best Answer

    Changing the cursor theme back to the default Adwaita (theme) in My Unity resolved this along with lowering the pointer speed and sensitivity in system settings >> mouse and touch-pad

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  4. My cursor does the same thing, though only when I use the LibreOffice Writer. I found this was due to two things:

    1. I do not have the proper keyboard drivers installed (and am having a hell of a time finding them for my Inspiron N5040).
    2. Turn off the auto-save option in which ever program you are using. I found that solved the problem for me.

    I also tried turning down the sensitivity on my touch pad but the problem is that the touch pad sensor runs the full length of the keyboard on my laptop, and it might on yours too.

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  5. I went into activities, entered mouse as the search. waited like 30 sec. for the search to parse. settings / mouse & touchpad

    Turned OFF touch to click. That solved my problem as just brushing the touchpad was being interpreted as a mouse click, causing focus to jump around, selecting text that then gets deleted by the next character, etc.

    command line for the gui is: $ gnome-control-center mouse

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  6. On November 2021 I tried the method in the post below, Using Touchpad Indicator utility; and it solved the 'cursor jumping randomly' problem :

    https://ostechnix.com/how-to-automatically-disable-touchpad-when-typing-in-ubuntu/

    Below is from the above webpage :

    - Using Touchpad Indicator utility - 


$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/atareao
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install touchpad-indicator

    After Touchpad Indicator is installed, launch it from Menu or application launcher; find it ( a little applet icon) on the panel (task bar).

    Click Touchpad Indicator icon >> Choose Preferences >> Select Actions tab >> check box "Disable touchpad on typing" >> Click OK

    ** Other info **

    • Default is 800 ms ( 0.8 seconds); can increase to e.g. 2 or 3 seconds and see how it goes.

    • For Auto Start, go to Preferences >> "General Options" tab >> Enable "Autostart".

    • Linux on my laptop is: Ubuntu 20.04

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