Below are 4 ways to disable Laptop TouchPad when using an external Mouse instead of a built-in Touchpad.
1. Disable Touchpad via Control Panel
Your system must have the Touchpad driver installed. Lets take the most common brand Synaptics as an example. You can open the “Mouse Properties” in Control Panel, and then switch to “Device Settings” tab with the Synaptics logo.
Now you will see the devices list, choose your Synaptics Touchpad, then click on “Disable” to stop it from working.
2. Disable Touchpad via Laptop Keyboard
Most laptops in the market have a built-in function key (Fn), just like the WiFi switcher, to quickly turn the Touchpad on or off.
This key may or may not be there in your laptop. It depends on what brand of laptop you are using.
3. Use TouchFreeze to disable Touchpad
While the two methods mentioned above can only disable the Touchpad permanently, TouchFreeze is a brilliant little application that disables the Touchpad temporarily when you start typing. Hence you don’t need to control the Touchpad switcher manually. Just leave it running background, and do your work confidently.
However, the above tool didn’t seem to work on my Windows 7 system correctly. May be it’s only for XP users.
4. Use Touchpad Pal to disable Touchpad
Similar to TouchFreeze, Touchpad Pal can also automatically disable Touchpad when you are typing text.
Compared to the tools introduced above, Touchpad pal has some advantages. Like it is compatible with Windows Vista and Windows 7, and displays the “Clicks blocked” frequency in the main interface.
