How to enable right click button for mousepad on Dell inspiron 13 with Ubuntu 18.04?

I have recently installed Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver (development branch) on a Dell Inspiron 13 5000 series.

The actual problem I'm facing is that the right click button for the mousepad is not detected and there is no way to configure it. I'm looking for the right button (below the mousepad area) to work, not having an area in the mousepad that simulates right click, nor wanting to use two fingers tap as right click.

The mouspad has a button for right click which should work, but instead I'm having to use two fingers tap for tight click instead.

Of course if I use an USB mouse attached I can right click but I would like to have same right button click on the mousepad.

Actually I have following pointer output for xinput:

$ xinput
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Logitech USB Receiver id=17 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Logitech USB Receiver id=19 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ DELL0740:00 06CB:7E7E Touchpad id=12 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ ELAN Touchscreen id=11 [slave pointer (2)]

I had same problem while installing PCLinux and Slackware so I am thinking of drivers issue maybe. But not sure how to tackle this.

How can I enable the right button click on the mousepad? Means I want the physical button on the mousepad to work properly.

1 Answer

Step 1: Install the gnome-tweak-tool

sudo apt update
sudo apt install gnome-tweak-tool

Step 2: Open the "gnome-tweak-tool" by writing "gnome-tweak-tool" or simply "tweaks" in the Activities menu and navigate to the tab "Keyboard and Mouse". There go to the tab "Mouse Click Emulation" and choose one of the options "Fingers" or "Area".

Probably you want the "Area" option