Enabling Additional Features on Synaptics Touchpad

Synaptics_ClickPad[1] I think majority of modern laptops use Synaptic touchpad in them. These are capacitive input panels, so naturally they can detect multiple finger presses at once.

Recent Synaptics drivers have a lot of multi-touch gesture functionality in them. However, you will find most of it disabled on many notebooks – I think for marketing reasons (or maybe to avoid aggravating Apple too much ;) ).

However, all multi-touch functionality is present on standard driver, and just artificially “hidden” using registry keys (which are even named like “HideTwoFingerScrolling”, how honest of them ;) ). So, to re-enable missing features just:

  • Download this .reg file, save it somewhere – on your desktop for example. Do not choose “Open” in browser, choose “Save To…”!
  • Click on it to open in Explorer (important! open from Windows Explorer/Desktop only, not directly from your web browser, not from third-party file managers like Total Commander – to make sure it will use correct registry on 64-bit systems)
  • when it asks if you sure to modify registry, choose “yes”
  • go to the touchpad control panel – you should now see new available options like “Two Finger Scrolling” (in the “Scrolling” section) and “Application Gestures”.

This was tested 100% working with Synaptics driver version 13.2.7.3 on Toshiba Qosmio X505.

I fully expect Synaptics to make feature re-enabling harder after everybody starts using this registry trick. So after you confirm that it’s worked for you - I recommend to make working driver version backup, just in case.

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