Toogle (enable/disable) Thinkpad 440p touchpad on Linux

toggle_touchpad.py

#!/home/bms/miniconda3/bin/python3

#     This script toggles status (enabled/disabled) of my notebook touchpad. My
# notebook is a Thinkpad 440p and its touchpad is a Synaptics TM2722-001. The
# system is Linux Mint. I map it to a keyboard shortcut (alt+F11 in my case).
#
#     I tried just using: xinput disable 14
#     ... but the device id keeps changing after boot.
#
#     I tried just using: xinput disable "Synaptics TM2722-001"
#     ... but the device string keeps changing after system updates
#
#     I hope this script with partial matching of multiple strings will be
# robust against such changes. If not, I hope it will be easy to fix.
#
#     It should be easy to adapt to other notebook models, just change strings
# on toggle_touchpad() function.

from subprocess import run, PIPE


def read_devices():
    result = run(['xinput'], stdout=PIPE)
    return result.stdout.decode('utf-8')


def find_line(text, looking_for=[]):
    for line in text.split('\n'):
        for string in looking_for:
            if string in line:
                return line


def find_id(line):
    loc = line.find('id=')
    return line[loc+3:loc+5]


def read_properties(device_id):
    result = run(['xinput', 'list-props', device_id], stdout=PIPE)
    return result.stdout.decode('utf-8')


def toggle_touchpad():
    device_strings = ['Synaptics', 'TM2722-001']
    device_line = find_line(read_devices(), device_strings)
    device_id = find_id(device_line)
    enabled_line = find_line(read_properties(device_id), ['Device Enabled'])
    enabled = bool(int(enabled_line[-1]))
    command = 'disable' if enabled else 'enable'
    run(['xinput', command, device_id], stdout=PIPE)
    return device_id


if __name__ == "__main__":
    toggle_touchpad()

Using it for 14 days and still works

9 months later and still working