Tapping lets you, well, tap the touchpad to perform a click instead of using a mouse button or clicking down on the touchpad with your finger. On any Windows laptop I use for any length of time, I always disable two touchpad settings: tapping and zoom. You can dial back this setting with the drop-down menu for Touchpad sensitivity, choosing between Most, High, Medium and Low sensitivity. One of of the most annoying problems you'll encounter is a touchpad that's overly sensitive to taps to the point where it moves the cursor around as your type because your thumb or palm brushed ever so gently against it. Play around with the slider until you find a speed you can work with. Head to Settings > Devices > Touchpad and you'll see a slider near the top labeled Change the cursor speed. Thankfully, Windows 10 offers a number of settings to fine tune how your touchpad reacts to your clicks, taps and swipes. Or maybe it's not sensitive enough, making you repeat yourself. Maybe the touchpad feels too sensitive, registering phantom clicks and gestures. Perhaps your cursor is moving too fast or too slow. There are a number of ways a touchpad can feel wonky. Read more: Best laptops of 2020 Settle down a skittish touchpad

If not, then you'll need to find a mouse and go into Settings to toggle on the touchpad.

Try toggling this key (while pressing the Fn key or, if that doesn't work, not pressing it) to see if your touchpad springs back to life. My Dell Inspiron laptop doesn't have function key for such a purpose, but look at your row of Function keys and see if one has an icon that looks a tiny touchpad with a diagonal line through it. If your touchpad is dead and your laptop doesn't have a touchscreen and you don't have a mouse within reach, you can try to to find the function key that might enable and disable the touchpad. With your touchscreen or mouse, open Settings and go to Devices > Touchpad and make sure the toggle switch at the top is toggled On. If your laptop doesn't feature a touchscreen display, then you will need a mouse to revive a disabled touchpad. And if you'd like more tips, here's how to master Windows 10 using 11 hidden tricks. I'll start with how to revive a dead touchpad and then cover the various settings you can use to tweak its sensitivity, gestures and scrolling direction. Whether your touchpad is dead to the touch or is acting skittish - registering unintended gestures while failing to recognize your intended swipes, pinches, taps and clicks - Windows 10 ( $148 at Amazon) offers a host of settings to let you get working the way you want. You can extend the life of your laptop with a few, simple tweaks to its touchpad. There are three things you can do to bring your touchpad back to life.ĭon't let a touchy touchpad ruin your opinion of a laptop that's otherwise in fine working order.

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