Microsoft has introduced a bunch of new touchpad gestures with Windows 10. These new touchpad gestures allow you to quickly switch between running apps, open task view, open Cortana, and perform many other jobs by simply moving two or more fingers on your laptop’s touchpad.
New touchpad gestures in Windows 10
In addition to the standard gestures like tap to click, two-finger tap to right-click, and pinch to zoom, the following new gestures are available in Windows 10.
# Three-finger tap – open Cortana
# Three finger drags and slides – switch apps
# Three finger up – open task view
# Three fingers down – show desktop
# Four-finger tap – open action center
Although these gestures help you quickly switch between apps and get your job done quickly, not all users like these gestures offered in Windows 10. Since all these actions can be performed using keyboard shortcuts as well, many users prefer using keyboard shortcuts over touchpad gestures.
If you’re not using one or more touchpad gestures and want to turn them off, you can do so by following given below instructions. One can also use these directions to turn on touchpad gestures in Windows 10.
NOTE: If you want to completely turn off the touchpad, please refer to our 3 ways to turn off the touchpad in the Windows 10 guide.
Turn on or off touchpad gestures via Settings
This method is only for notebooks with precision touchpads. To check if your laptop’s touchpad is precision or not, please follow the directions in Step 1 to 4.
Step 1: Open the Settings app by clicking the Settings icon in the left pane of the Start menu. The Settings app can also be launched by using the Windows logo + I keyboard shortcut.
Step 2: Click the second icon labeled Devices (Bluetooth, printers, mouse).
Step 3: Click Mouse and touchpad to view various settings for the mouse and touchpad.
Step 4: Here, under the Touchpad section, if your notebook is equipped with the precision touchpad, you will see options to turn on or off the touchpad as well as touchpad gestures.
Note that you might get options to turn on or off touchpad gestures if your laptop is not equipped with the precision touchpad. However, there is a workaround to enable precision touchpad on any laptop.
Turn on or off the touchpad gestures you want to enable or disable, and then close Settings app. That’s it!
If your laptop is not equipped with the precision touchpad, you will only see the option to change the touchpad delay before clicks work (to avoid accidentally moving the mouse cursor while typing).
Turn on or off touchpad gestures via the Control Panel
Most of the laptops, including those that don’t have precision touchpad, shipped after the release of Windows 8 (which happened in October 2012) offer multi-touch gestures. If the touchpad driver has been updated to Windows 10, your non-precision touchpad also likely offers most of the gestures if not all.
Step 1: In the Start menu search box or Run command box, type Main.cpl and then press the Enter key to open Mouse properties. This can also be launched by opening the Control Panel, changing View by to Small icons, and then clicking Mouse.
Step 2: Once Mouse Properties is launched, click on the last tab named ClickPad, Thinkpad or Touchpad.
Step 3: Click the Settings button to open the Synaptics Control Panel.
Step 4: Switch to the Click, Scroll, and Gestures tabs one after another to view all gestures supported by your touchpad.
Step 5: Check or uncheck gestures to turn them on or off. Once done, click the OK button, and then click Apply.
Do you prefer gestures or keyboard shortcuts?
art says
why cant iI turn that damn tap to click and 2 finger scroll of
Stphen Jones says
This has reduced my productivity by half.
Why can’t I work the way I want to work – I don’t want windows to open every time I breathe or randomly select and text, and to not be able to click where I want and select the text I want, and often to not be able to click at all..move
It’s the same with the irritating and equally hated smart menu that always pops up in the wrong place and obscures the text with which you won’t work with and serves no useful purpose other than to interfere with what you are doing.
Why doesn’t somebody at Microsoft read these comments and understand the incredible frustration
I have given u correcting the mistakes the system has going bonkers again and will not let me click without selecting all of the text-
This is a day in day out its been driving me mad for years- I have tried every possible combination of settings and find ways to work at least at half speed then along comes an upgrade and I’m back to usage after updates thing go pear shaped
I’m not correcting this anymore it was typed correctly and this is what the touchpad does -randomly sticks so you type in the wrong place or and randomly moves text, why does the mouse stay sticky’ what possible use is there for such an annoying feature if there is no way to turn it off again.
It’s faster with a pencil.
Amanda says
After the recent update my touchpad options were turned back on which is annoying. But now I can not turn them back off because the option to do so was taken away from me in the options panel. I can not stand the tap click option on the touchpad since it does things that I do not want to happen. How can I turn this option off again when there everything shown on this site does not appear on my options?
Donald Rappe says
The tremor in my fingers has begun opening windows again after your God damned update. Why do you always destroy my settings when you update?
Mike Callahan says
I need to turn the tap feature off on my mousepad.
When I tried to enter main.cpl ClickPad, Thinkpad or Touchpad is doesn’t show.
I can turn down the sensitivity but I need to turn the tap feature off completely.
How do I do it?
Misheck Mushota says
my laptop is Toshiba Portege, the problem at hand is that,’the touchpad is locked’ help to unlock it
Bryon Cox says
Recent update turned on the multi tap functions yet again. Now I can not turn them off. This is an update? How exactly is this better when I try to use the touchpad as a mouse it acts like I am touching the buttons when I am trying to scroll around and it opens windows I had no interest in opening which prevents me from doing what I was trying to do. This is an update? Worse yet the update wont allow me to roll back the driver to go back to when it functioned reasonably. This is an update?
Why do updates change the settings I use? What exactly is the point in being able to setup your computer to function as you want it to only to have an update change those functions back to default. This is an update?
I would prefer that you update back to Windows 98SE or XP when it actually functioned because this is not functioning. This is an update?
Jim195 says
It tells me I need an app and then, when I click to go to the app store, it crashes.
Fadlil says
in main.cpl ClickPad, Thinkpad or Touchpad is doesn’t showed. how to fix it?
soc says
very helpful thanks!
Robert Turtle says
Not very helpful. The software is great, but you’ve made it so hard to switch off the truly annoying mousepad features! Of course, it’s not your fault there’s no rim or even a space between the left click button and the pad on my laptop. The jumpy insertion point wastes a lot of time and energy.
Gerd Ritter says
this tip not work with MS HDI Mouse Driver !!!!!!!!!
admin says
Jason, it seems that the touchpad driver is not installed.
Jason says
what if you only have a “Mouse” under setting & not “Mouse & Touchpad”? This is my issue.
This Article is lame says
unfortunately bogus advice if you dont have the synaptics software. Which I don’t, none of those screens for clickpad, touchpad, thinkpad etc are available to me. I hate having windows start menu and cortina fly in my face and having my desktop resized every time I even accidentally touch the touchpad. Hooray linux ftw!
Wouter says
Hai, i dont have a precission touchpad and neither the ClickPad, Thinkpad or Touchpad tabs in main.cpl
any idea how i can enable the gestures again? they were working a few weeks ago but stopped working recently.
Mark says
Very helpful, unlike Microsoft’s help!
However there’s a bug in the ThinkPad options. When you use Trackpoint only, the gestures work (that’s why I want to disable them) but they aren’t configurable (all gesture options grayed out). To fix this, temporarily switch to using both trackpad and trackpoint, disable the gestures you don’t want, then switch back to trackpoint only.
meri says
aafter upgradeing windows 10 multi finger touchpad worked for a while. now it isn’t. I dont have thinkpad tab in mouse properties or any touchpad settings in my mouse setting.
i want to turn on multi finger gestures on my touch pad and i can’t.
Hepmad says
hi,
actually i dont have thinkpad tab in mouse properties or any touchpad settings in my mouse setting.
actually i wanted to turn on 3 finger gestures of my touch pad and i couldn’t. how can i fix this issue???