Enable tap to click in i3 WM

When switching from Gnome or KDE to using i3 tiling window manager on a laptop, you might be frustrated to discover that tap-to-click on your touchpad no longer functions. This is how to re-enable tap-to-click in i3 by properly using X11 configuration.

Here’s the command to run if you’re of the tl;dr persuasion:

sudo mkdir -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d && sudo tee <<'EOF' /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-touchpad.conf 1> /dev/null
Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "touchpad"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
        Driver "libinput"
        Option "Tapping" "on"
EndSection

EOF

Then log out and log back in, or reboot. Note, additional configuration options are explained below.

The wrong way

Many posts I found when trying to solve this for myself referred users to:

1. Run xinput list
2. Reading through the list for what you think is your touchpad
3. Using the id= value from the prior step to run xinput list-props <device>
4. Looking for the ID value for “Tapping Enabled” listed between a set of parenthesis
5. Adding an exec to your i3 config to run xinput set-prop <device> <property> 1

While this is effective it certainly isn’t copy-paste drop dead simple and is a work around solution, rather than solving the issue using the capabilities X11 provides.

Doing it the X11 config way

X11 provides configurations in a directory “X11/xorg.conf.d/” this directory could live in various places on your system depending on your distribution.

However, X11 will always attempt to also load configurations from /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ when present.

To ensure the directory exists, run:

sudo mkdir -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d

Next we’ll create a new file “90-touchpad.conf”. The configuration file names end with .conf and are read in ASCII order—by convention file names begin with two digits followed by a dash.

sudo touch /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-touchpad.conf

Now open up the file your editor of choice (with suitable write permission of course) and paste the following:

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "touchpad"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
        Driver "libinput"
        Option "Tapping" "on"
EndSection

Additional libinput options

Libinput support additional options beyond tapping, you can add and configure each one by adding them on new lines after Option "Tapping" "on" in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-touchpad.conf, for example:

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "touchpad"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
        Driver "libinput"
        Option "Tapping" "on"
        Option "TappingButtonMap" "lrm"
        Option "NaturalScrolling" "on"
        Option "ScrollMethod" "twofinger"
EndSection

Two and three finger tap

Two and three finger tap configurations can be set with to have two finger tap to cause a right-click and three finger tap to cause a middle-click with:

        Option "TappingButtonMap" "lrm"

Or two make a two finger tap do a middle-click and a three finger tap to cause a right-click:

        Option "TappingButtonMap" "lmr"

Natural scrolling

Natural scrolling can be enabled with:

        Option "NaturalScrolling" "on"

Scroll method

Two scroll with two fingers, the default:

        Option "ScrollMethod" "twofinger"

If you prefer to use the edge of your touchpad:

        Option "ScrollMethod" "edge"