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When a thumb is resting on the bottom part of a precision touchpad, the touchpad may frequently detect it as if it were a normal finger during gestures.

I've found lots of threads regarding other types of touchpads or other operating systems. I've also found out that the Precision touchpad has a 'curtain' with low sensitivity - but it seems that the curtain only covers the left, right, and top, but not the bottom - and that many of its supposed entries in RegEdit can't be found on my Dell XPS 13, for some reason, even if they were relevant.

Any solution to this issue for Windows 10 users?

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  • while the registry entries you're referring to may not already exist, they often work anyway. have you tried them yet?
    – shawn
    Nov 15, 2019 at 3:51

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I agree that making the touchpads "buttonless" (thanks, Apple!) was done for prettiness (thanks, Apple!) instead of function. But, it sells product (thanks, Apple!), and non-Apple fools took the bait from Apple (thanks, Apple!). For those of us who use our computers for more than entertainment (thanks, Windows!) there is a simple but certain solution, but it's not electronic, so you geeks might not like it. I have used this solution on 3 laptop touchpads and have had 100% success every time with no issues for years and years. Your touchpad will probably not detect your finger through ordinary housefold aluminum foil. Go to an office supplies store and buy a role of thin double-sided tape. The tape that I use looks like regular Scotch tape, but it's double-sided. It takes some fine hand dexterity to make it nice and neat, but just cut a piece, or pieces, of foil to cover the area(s) where you don't want your touchpad to detect your finger movement. Then, use the double-sided tape to stick the foil to the touchpad.

Tips: Wash the oils off of your hands before starting. Clean the touchpad so that it's not oily. Cut the sticky part of a Post-It note to make a paper template of the area that you want to cover. Stick the template to the uncut foil. (If the sticky part of the template is only partial, that's OK, because it will still help hold the template in place on the foil.) Stick the tape onto the other side of the foil to cover the area of the template (if you have to use more than 1 strip of tape, just carefully line them up side-by-side so that they don't overlap and so that there is as little gap as possible). Cut the foil and the tape at the same time by following around the template. This will make the tape reach all the way to the edges of the foil all around. Now you're ready to carefully stick the foil to the touchpad. You're done! You won't believe how well this works and how durable it is. I have never had to change the foil, and it has never come off or torn or anything. And, it looks good, almost like OEM. The areas of the touchpad that are covered are small enough that there is no interference with my using the touchpad as I wish. I put 2 tiny triangles of foil, one each on the lower-left and lower-right of my touchpad for left- and right click. The triangles are only about the size of a keyboard key, just enough to click on with my finger. And now, when I rest my finger on the click area of the touchpad, the touchpad doesn't even know it.

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  • If the touchpad doesn't know where your finger is, how does it know whether you're doing a left click or a right click? Feb 24 at 14:58

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