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I use a Lenovo X250 with Debian. I have a touchpad with 3 physical buttons on top. Using xev I can see that these correspond to buttons 1, 2, and 3. Additionally, the touchpad itself can be pressed. Pressing it with one finger generates a button 1 event, pressing it with two fingers generates an event for button 3.

I would like to swap buttons 1 and 3 since I am left handed. This can be done by calling:

 xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 2 3"

This has the desired effect for the physical buttons on top, however, it unfortunately also swaps the events generated by the touchpad click. So, now a one fingered click generates an event for button 3 and a two fingered click generates an event for button 1.

Is there anyway to swap the physical buttons but leave the touchpad click intact?

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  • What driver are you using for the touchpad (/var/log/Xorg.log)? If synaptics, you can configure the buttons generated by the touchpad click (xorg.conf or xinput, man synaptics). Commented Jun 22, 2017 at 18:45
  • Run xinput list to find the touchpad device name or ID then xinput list-props "touchpad device name or ID" to list properties that you can change with xinput set-prop. Setting one or more property may allow you to do what you want. Commented Jun 23, 2017 at 1:02
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    I am using synaptics. I looked through the documentation. It seems that TapButton1-3 and ClickFinger1-3 are the most likely candidates. I've tried setting them via synclient, but they don't seem to change anything. Do I need to restart something after setting them? Commented Jul 5, 2017 at 20:16
  • i think you can setup this at the desktop level (kde/gnome) on the setting panel if you are using one of those Commented Jan 16, 2020 at 8:59
  • I don't use kde or gnome. I use xmonad which has poor settings support. Commented Jan 17, 2020 at 20:21

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After more research, I discovered that the right way to do this is via xinput.

My Lenovo laptop has both a TrackPoint and Touchpad and their names tend to change over time depending on the driver I use. It is important to ensure that you set the right device. For me this is the TrackPoint. It can be set to left handed operation using the following command:

xinput set-prop "$(xinput list --name-only | grep -i 'trackpoint')" "libinput Left Handed Enabled" 1

This flips button 1 and 3 but leaves the pad click on button 1. This can be verified with the xev command.

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