How to enable lower right corner touchpad as Secondary click on 2008 Macbook 5,1

Question

In OSX, you've the option to set a physical click on the lower right corner of the touchpad to be your Secondary (right) click. I can't seem to figure out to duplicate this functionality in Elementary OS Loki.

Here's some details:

• Macbook 5,1 (Late 2008)
• Elementary OS 0.4 Loki
• No physical buttons, just a single pad that can be clicked
• The touchpad is setup for right handed use
• Primary (left) click works fine
• I can tap with two fingers to active the Secondary (right) click menu
• The issue is the combination of physical click to the lower right of the touchpad registers the same as Primary (left) click.

Running xinput --list my touchpad shows up as being a bcm5974

When I run xinput --list-props bcm5974 I get the following output of options:

Device 'bcm5974':
    Device Enabled (142):   1
    Coordinate Transformation Matrix (144): 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000
    libinput Tapping Enabled (276): 1
    libinput Tapping Enabled Default (277): 0
    libinput Tapping Drag Enabled (278):    1
    libinput Tapping Drag Enabled Default (279):    1
    libinput Tapping Drag Lock Enabled (280):   0
    libinput Tapping Drag Lock Enabled Default (281):   0
    libinput Accel Speed (282): 0.875000
    libinput Accel Speed Default (283): 0.000000
    libinput Natural Scrolling Enabled (284):   0
    libinput Natural Scrolling Enabled Default (285):   0
    libinput Send Events Modes Available (260): 1, 0
    libinput Send Events Mode Enabled (261):    0, 0
    libinput Send Events Mode Enabled Default (262):    0, 0
    libinput Left Handed Enabled (286): 0
    libinput Left Handed Enabled Default (287): 0
    libinput Scroll Methods Available (288):    1, 1, 0
    libinput Scroll Method Enabled (289):   1, 0, 0
    libinput Scroll Method Enabled Default (290):   1, 0, 0
    libinput Click Methods Available (291): 1, 1
    libinput Click Method Enabled (292):    0, 1
    libinput Click Method Enabled Default (293):    0, 1
    libinput Disable While Typing Enabled (294):    1
    libinput Disable While Typing Enabled Default (295):    1
    Device Node (263):  "/dev/input/event8"
    Device Product ID (264):    1452, 566
    libinput Drag Lock Buttons (296):   <no items>
    libinput Horizonal Scroll Enabled (265):    1

Has anyone figure out a way to get this to work?

Answer 1

elementary OS 0.4 Loki uses LibInput and not xinput.

You can change your click method in System Settings > Mouse & Touchpad.

To use touchpad areas for right clicking instead of Multitouch, change the click method to "Touchpad areas" under "Physical Clicking".

Answer 2

The short answer is to change the property Click Method Enabled (292) from 0, 1 to 1, 0. No idea what the heck this means, but it works.

UPDATE: While below works to set Click Method Enabled, Daniel's answer shows how the same is accomplished via the eOS GUI without much effort.

I found the answer buried in a random redhat post: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1214477

For my device the command was:

 xinput --set-prop bcm5974 292  1 0

After changing this setting verified:

• Secondary (right) click works when clicking lower right corner of touchpad
• Two finger tap still works for Secondary click
• Primary (left) click still works (thankfully!)
• Single finger tap to select (Primary click) still works as well
• Changing other properties in the Elementary OS System Settings does not revert the property setting

However... xinput property setting changes don't persist across login/logout (thus lost every restart/shutdown).

I tried putting the xinput commands in .xsession, .xsessionrc, and .bash_profile--none worked.

What finally worked was to create a file /usr/share/applications/configure_touchpad.desktop with the following content:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Custom Touchpad Config
Comment=Set your mouse and touchpad preferences
Exec= xinput --set-prop bcm5974 278 0 &&  xinput --set-prop bcm5974 292 1 0
Icon=/usr/share/icons/HighContrast/256x256/devices/input-touchpad.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
StartupNotify=true
Categories=GNOME;GTK;Settings;HardwareSettings;X-GNOME-Settings-Panel;System;

I then logged out and logged back in. (Seems to be needed to make app show up in the System Settings startup app list). Went into System Settings->Applications->Startup, search for the name "Custom" and added it to my startup.

Hope this Helps others!