While the Windows 8/8.1 was designed for touchscreen, the latest Windows 10 is optimized for touch screen input and works equally well with traditional input methods such as mouse and keyboard. The lock screen, Start, and Settings have especially been designed for touchscreen.
The new tablet mode in Windows 10 makes it easy to use on a device that supports touch input. When the tablet mode is activated, full-screen Start appears, icons are nicely placed on the File Explorer, and icons on the taskbar are also nicely placed for easy touch input.
Disabling touch screen in Windows
Now, if you’re running Windows 10/8.1 on a touch device, you might want to temporarily disable the touch input (touch screen) so that you can use it as a laptop by connecting a pair of keyboard and mice to your device. As you have discovered by now, Windows 10/8.1 doesn’t include an option to disable the touch input or touch screen, and surprisingly, there is not even a single third-party tool to for this job.
Windows 8 Developer Preview, the first preview release of Windows 8 (which was released almost three years ago), did offer an option to disable the touch screen or touch input. In the Developer Preview, we could navigate to Pen and Touch settings located in the Control Panel to quickly disable the touch input or touch screen. For some reasons, Microsoft removed this option from Release Preview and RTM builds, making it difficult to disable the touch input in the tiled operating system. Likewise, there is no such option in Windows 10 to turn off the touch screen.
If, for some reason, you want to disable the touch input in Windows 10/8.1, you can use the following workaround.
Warning: Once the touch input is disabled, you will need to use a pair of mice and keyboard to get your work done. Don’t attempt this method if you don’t have a keyboard or mice with you right now, as you need them in order to enable touch input.
Disabling touch input in Windows 10/8.1
Step 1: Open Device Manager. To do this, type Device Manager in Start search, and then click/tap Device Manager entry to launch the same.
Alternatively, you can right-click (touch and hold) on the Start button to open the power user menu and then click or tap Device Manager to open the same.
Step 2: In the Device Manager window, expand Tab, and then expand Human Interface Devices.
Step 3: Right-click on the second entry titled HID-complaint device, click Disable and then click Yes button when you see a warning message saying that “Disabling this device will cause it to stop functioning. Do you really want to disable it?” to disable the touch screen or touch input. That’s it!
If your touch screen is still working fine as it was before, right-click on all other HID-complaint device entries one after another and disable them as well.
To enable the touch input again
Step 1: Open Device Manager by following the steps mentioned above.
Step 2: Expand Tab, expand Human Interface Devices. Enable HID-complaint device one after another and enable them.
These instructions work great on both Windows 10 as well as Windows 8.1. Good luck!
James Spring says
Mark from 27th December 2016; your advice on using Windows Narrator to make it possible to enter a password, despite the frenzied phantom clicking, is an absolute stroke of genius. You really helped me to regain the use of my SP3, thank you so much.
Ray says
Thanks. I cracked my touch screen laptop like an idiot. It still works just fine but I don’t want to shell out any cash to fix it until I have to. I disabled HID-compliant touch-screen to stop the screen from clicking everything. I can still use my pen to move the screen around which is neat. Thank you for writing the article.
Mark Ray says
This work great for me. However, the device I disabled was called HID-compliant touch screen.
Boris Epstein says
Unfortunately, the Device Manager method does not seem to work for me. No matter which HID device I disable it doesn’t do the trick.
Is there a way to tell – other than by trial and error, of course – which one of them corresponds to what?
Lori says
Mark from December 2016. Thank you thank you. Thank you. My computer was dropped and the touch screen broke. Your advice saved me. Thank you again
Jared P says
THANK YOU!!! I’ve been looking for an easy option to disable this darn touch screen for so long and I hadn’t found a real working answer until tonight! My infant kept coming over and touching the screen closing whatever I was working on. I never use the touch screen anyway and have always found it kind of dumb. I’ll always use a keyboard and touchpad or mouse instead. Thanks again for a real-world working answer to this problem.
Bluewaterbob says
Correction to my solution to stopping constant ghost clicks. YOU HAVE TO LEAVE THE ‘FAST START UP’ OPTION IN POWER SETTINGS UNCHECKED. OTHERWISE THE LAPTOP BOOTS UP WITHOUT RECALIBRATING THE SCREEN AND YOU WILL BE DEALING WITH ALL THOSE CONSTANT PHANTOM CLICKS AGAIN.
(EDITORS YOU MAY ADD THIS TO THE BOTTOM OF MY PREVIOUS POST TO AVOID CONFUSION, AND REMOVE THE BOTTOM PART WHERE I SUGGEST TRYING TO TURN IT BACK ON. IT TOOK ME HALF AN HOUR TO CHANGE IT BACK!)
Simon says
Best way I found is using this little app just double click the notification icon to disable or enable the touch screen TouchDisable found here zardssoft.96.It
Jerry says
Can you disable the touch screen and use the touchpad instead?
Omkar says
Any method if a non-admin user can disable the touch screen on WIndows 10?
Device manager requires a user to be admin to change the settings.
Mark says
So I have a cracked laptop touch screen meaning that it keeps reporting false clicks and makes it hard to do anything…
I couldn’t even get as far as the Desktop to apply the above method as I have the password screen to get through before I get there… it wouldn’t let me login because I couldn’t focus long enough on the password box to type anything (the cracked screen kept clicking away). I eventually found a solution I thought I’d share to help anyone in the same position.
1. On the login screen, enter Windows Narrator mode when your mouse is over the password box. This is normally Windows Key + Enter. This should now keep the focus on the login box (with a light blue outline) to allow you to type in your password.
2. After logging in, press Windows Key + X, then M. This will bring up Device Manager.
3. As in the original post, find the touch screen (for me this was “HID-compliant touch screen” under Human Interface Devices) and disable it.
Hope that helps!
pat says
i hate the touch screen had so much trouble. was going to throw it away will try some of these ideas thanks for help
Lorelei says
Jim,
I got it to work on Windows 10, but it took some work. Hopefully my adventures will help you. First, follow the instructions at the bottom of the linked page for DeviceManagement scripts (unblock, etc., then run the script under Importing the Cmdlet module). Note you’ll need to put the extracted files in [your user directory]\OneDrive\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\ and cut all the files out of the “Release” folder and paste them into the “DeviceManagement” folder. (Thank you, Microsoft.)
Then take Ronald’s awesome script (thank you so much, Ronald!) and retype the quotes and single-quotes if they came in as “smart” quotes. Also, change $PSScriptRoot\DeviceManagement.psd1 to $PSScriptRoot\DeviceManagement\DeviceManagement.psd1.
Good luck!
Morgan says
How do you turn it off without going into windows? touchscreen is broken and thinks it’s constantly being tapped.
Sharon says
This is fantastic! I have an ASUS all-in-one desktop with touch screen (which I barely used). I had some problems with it a while back and disabled the function, but after a Windows 10 upgrade it somehow started up again and was falsely triggering all over the screen. I’ve spent hours trying to figure out this problem, have even restored my computer to factory settings without any improvement, and now after doing this my problem seems to be finally fixed. Thanks!
Ole says
Can I disable touchscreeb before getting to windows at all? Screen broke and presses itself all the time so mouse and pad won’t work. In adittion laptop has password to enter to desktop, and with all the pressing, I can’t get to windows icon at all. So I need to disable touchscreen before the comp reaches to windows. Any ideas?
Alex says
Does disabling the touchscreen by turning off the HID-compliant device reduce battery consumption? Everything I’ve read about touchscreen laptops is that they’re power hogs. Thanks for any insight provided.
tyuktu says
That was great.. Life saving trick.Thanks
Alan Whyborn says
Doesn’t work for me: Surface Pro 3 Windows 10. I DID have a batch that worked a while ago but no longer does. Does it matter where the PS1 file is located? Roger’s instructions were not terribly clear on WHICH folder: there are a couple of folders created when extracting the cmdlets.
Sergey says
Script works in Windows 10. But you should run powershell and enable scripts as described. You can find powershell file by clicking “Open file location” on the shortcut.
Many thanks to Ronald for script!!
Jim says
Ronald,
Thanks for the script. Does this work with Windows 10? I am getting an error with the DeviceManagement cmdlets not being able to load. Wondering if that library only works in Windows 8.x…
Anita luttrell says
To disable it this didn’t work I had to go to hid-complient touch screen so use that instead
Ronald says
If anyone is looking for a quick way to toggle the drivers, I wrote a script for it. Takes a bit of work but saves a lot of time later on.
First, download and extract Device Management PowerShell Cmdlets (https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Device-Management-7fad2388) to a folder. Inside that folder, create a new file named “toggle_touchscreen.ps1”. Use a text editor and copy and paste the following into the file:
$Device = ‘HID-compliant touch screen’
echo “Toggling ${Device}…”
Import-Module $PSScriptRoot\DeviceManagement.psd1
$Status = Get-Device | Where-Object -Property Name -Match $Device | foreach {$_.ConfigurationFlags}
If ($Status -eq ‘CONFIGFLAG_DISABLED’) {
Get-Device | Where-Object -Property Name -Match $Device | Enable-Device
} Else { Get-Device | Where-Object -Property Name -Match $Device | Disable-Device
}
Save it. Next, create a shortcut to the script you made earlier (right-click > Create Shortcut). Then right click the newly made shortcut and go to Properties and then the Shortcut tab. In ‘Target’, add ‘powershell -f’ in front of the text. Hit OK, then right-click the shortcut again, go to Shortcut tab, then Advanced, and check off the ‘Run as Admin’ box. You can place that shortcut anywhere that’s convenient.
Finally, open Powershell with Admin Privileges (right-click > Open as Admin) and type in and enter the following:
Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
That’s it, shortcut should work.
Kendra says
Awesome! I had tried many times to turn off touchscreen and almost gave up, but everything you said worked. On my touchscreen laptop I disabled the “HID – compliant touch screen” and was able to enable it when I wanted to be on laptop touch mode. Thanks so much! Much appreciated!
David says
This is super aggrivating.
I often have to point-out things on the screen to co-workers and end up selecting or launching things. I still like having touch, but not having a way to disable it temporarily is a real pain.. something like WINKEY+T would be a nice shortcut to toggle it… that way if you were in tablet mode you wouldn’t be able to disable it unless you had a keyboard… or use the mouse to do it with a double R+L click in the upper right or put an icon in the right swipe menus for win10….
But.. don’t expect me to go into device manager to do it… (looks like I may have an idea for my next program for the windows store!)
Jon says
all of a sudden my touchscreen is not working. All devices are enabled. Help?
Gary Hayes says
Was looking for a quick way to temporarily disable touch screen so I could clean it off without aggravating everything on the screen… guess I will just have to turn the computer off or open an app like alarm clock so I don’t accidentally delete things.
Greg says
cracked the glass on a dell inspiron 15 3537 which literally short circuits the touch functionality. It constantly gave false readings all over the screen. Even when I had a 2nd monitor, and disabling the laptop monitor it still would interfere with the 2nd monitor and open apps randomly. Dell wanted $290 to replace the lcd/digitizer/glass. I disabled HID-Compliant Touch Screen in device manager. cut up a spare screen protector to cover it from cracking further (I hope.) Now I can work again, even with the desktops extended. We’ll see how long this setup lasts.
Octavian says
Touchsreen in the laptops is such a gimmick. I used it for a week maybe than shut it off and never used ever since.
Jodo says
My daughter’s laptop touchscreen was having issues, so I thought disabling it would allow us to use the touchpad or just a mouse instead. When I disabled the first device on the list, it wanted me to restart. Upon restarting, the touchscreen worked fine! Maybe something was conflicting with it? Whatever; I’m happy now. Thanks for the tip!
bobby says
I have been using a touchscreen Windows 8 notebook all the time for the past year and a half, and it never once occurred to me there could be any utility to turning off the touchscreen.