Touchpad Edge Swipes - Enable or Disable in Windows 8

Brink · Feb 23, 2014

If you have not already, see if installing the latest touchpad driver from your laptop manufactures download page below may give you the options to disable edge swipes afterwards.

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SirPrimalform · Feb 23, 2014

I had already tried those before installing the more recent generic drivers, but thanks...

For whatever reason, my touchpad driver supports edge swipes but the configuration utility lacks the option to modify them in any way.

Brink · Feb 23, 2014

I'm not sure this will help with edge swipes from the touchpad, but you could disable the hot corners to help some from the pointer.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/15538-charms-bar-hint-enable-disable-windows-8-a.html

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/19749-switcher-enable-disable-top-left-corner-windows-8-a.html

SirPrimalform · Feb 23, 2014

Thanks again, but I've already managed to disable those. I don't find either the switcher or the charms inherently annoying, it's just the damn edge swipes. I'm used to starting at the edge of the touch pad if I want the cursor to travel further in one movement and so the charms bar keeps popping out when it's not wanted.

EDIT: Breakthrough! Despite being newer, Windows was actually choosing to ignore the updated drivers. It wasn't until I completely uninstalled the old drivers and then absolutely insisted that Windows install the new ones (as in "have disk") that it picked up on them but I'm happy to say that the newer drivers do in fact have an updated control panel with the option to disable edge swipes. This would probably fix the problem for the earlier poster who was also having problems with a V7.2 touchpad.

freedoomer · Mar 7, 2014

Hello all,
Somehow, when installing the latest Synaptic Touchpad driver (17.0.19) this wouldn't install properly on W8 64 bit. I had comments that neither would do for W7. So, this is what I've done to make it work. Hope it works for you all:

1- Be sure to start from a status where the previous Synaptic driver has been completely removed (i.e. from Add/Remove Programs). It's likely that as a result of this step you're asked to reboot. Do it;
2- Go to Device Manager and check that you should now have a generic mouse driver installed, under Mice and other pointing devices. This is added by Windows, at startup, because it detects that effectively there is a new device;
3- Now that everything is set, following the recommendations found in this forum, do an advanced reboot, selecting Troubleshoot, and option F7 (temporarily disabling driver signature requirement for new drivers);
4- Install the latest Touchpad driver, which should now install properly. Select "Install anyway" when requested. Do not reboot, since this will not do anything to help. You should note that actually there is nothing new for now;
5- Go to Device Manager and check that you still have a generic mouse driver installed, under Mice and other pointing devices. Even though the new driver software is installed, it's simply not yet in place. Click on properties and select update driver;
6- Select "Browse my computer for driver software";
7- Select "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer";
6- Uncheck "Show compatible devices";
7- Select Synaptics as manufacturer and the driver on the right panel. Obviously it gives you the message "This driver is not digitally signed!". Just ignore it. Click on Next;
8- Once finished this process, reboot normally;

DONE! Now this driver allows the user to disable the option "Edge Swipes", enjoy...

amaclac · Mar 16, 2014

Phew - what a relief - that edge swipe was driving me MAD! Thanks for the tip!

wolfheartmoon · Apr 22, 2014

Thank you so much! Made an account here just to tell you thanks. I was getting sick of not being able to do what I wanted. Maybe the swiping thing would be good for a tablet, but a laptop, no.

amaclac · Apr 22, 2014

Yes I think the designer had a tablet in mind!

vann59 · Apr 22, 2014

As long as MS continues to make huge steps backwards with every new OS, the forums will be busy sharing fixes.

IcewindZG · Oct 1, 2014

After searching forum after forum, post after post, trying all recommendations, I decided, "What the heck, I'll take a risk..."

I am using an MSI GT70, and nothing I tried was able to disable the charms swipe. Mouse options did not have the edge pull actons tab, registry edits changing the value to 000000 did not work, and uninstalling the driver suite was my only way to remove the edge swipe charms.
So in my desperation, I deleted the entire "Edge pull" registry tree from both HK_Current_User and HK_Local_Machine

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Synaptics\SynTPEnh\ZoneConfig\TouchPadPS2\Right Edge Pull
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Synaptics\SynTPEnh\ZoneConfig\TouchPadPS2\Right Edge Pull

I am not saying that this is required, or even necessarily wise, but this was my action and so far has proven successful. I do not see the charms bar unless I use the Win+C command. I hope someone else may be able to solve this headache through my findings. As always, back up your registry.

SCVLife · Oct 4, 2014

I tried EVERYTHING on the web.

Eventually what I did was I began deleting entire registry folders until the right edge swipe stopped.

Only once I deleted the entire folder below did it stop.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Synaptics\SynTPEnh

Deleting HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Synaptics had no effect on right edge swipe....

Like IcewindZG has said, doing this is probably not necessary but it is sufficient. Even after deleting so much, my touchpad seems to work fine, however the only features I use are the one and two finger scrolling.

scottish2 · Oct 9, 2014

Thank you for pointing out the touch pads swipe option I wasn't even aware it had a swipe feature as I use a mouse so could not disable it on my wife's laptop and she uses the pad. But this resolved the charms bar issue as it was merely the pads edge swipe feature pulling it up now it is disabled for good!!

Thanks

VoodooPriest · Dec 30, 2014

Hi,
I registered to thank IcewindZG and SCVLife. All my attempts, after I had spent about three hours scouring the Web for an answer, to get rid of the charms bar (right hand swipe) failed and I'm a seasoned software engineer, PhD in computer science, and now fully anti-Microsoft. Nothing worked, not even setting registry values to 0, not even the PC settings (since they are not visible on my laptop).

I finally succeeded by deleting these folders in the registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Synaptics\SynTPEnh\ZoneConfig\TouchPadPS2\Right Edge Pull
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Synaptics\SynTPEnh\ZoneConfig\TouchPadPS2\Right Edge Pull
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Synaptics\SynTPEnh\ZoneConfig\TouchPadPS2\Right Edge Pull Extended Zone

Note that:

I've had to restart the system after deleting each folder
after a certain number of restarts, the right edge swipe that used to bring up the Charms bar no longer brings it up
I didn't need to delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Synaptics\SynTPEnh\ZoneConfig\TouchPadPS2\Right Edge Pull
after the Charms bar fails to show up, the only folder in the registry that contains "Right Pull" is "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Synaptics\SynTPEnh\ZoneConfig\Defaults" (note the trailing 'Defaults')

NOTE: @freedoomer gave a means of installing the latest (to this date, 2014-12-30) Synaptics standard driver (v17.0.19). Beware that Syaptics has failed to sign this driver, which is the reason why it doesn't successfully install and you have to disable driver signature verification, as freedoomer suggests. The consequence is that you won't later be able to change any settings of the touchpad. If you happen to not like the inverted scrolling direction à la Mac OS X, too bad for you. The latest correctly signed version is v17.0.6 and it's the version I'm using but it doesn't have the Disable Mouse Gestures option. I can't seem to remember where I got it from. The flawed Synaptics driver has been around since 2013-10-17 (14 months now) so we can only hope that the next release will be available soon and they won't forget to sign it correctly

hannelius · Jan 5, 2015

Brink said:
Disable_Synaptics_Edge_Swipes.reg

thank you!

if there was a smiley with its hands in the air
spinning in circles with its face in the air
i'd use it...

Brink · Jan 5, 2015

FrancesL · Apr 11, 2015

freedoomer said:
1- Be sure to start from a status where the previous Synaptic driver has been completely removed (i.e. from Add/Remove Programs). It's likely that as a result of this step you're asked to reboot. Do it;
2- Go to Device Manager and check that you should now have a generic mouse driver installed, under Mice and other pointing devices. This is added by Windows, at startup, because it detects that effectively there is a new device;
3- Now that everything is set, following the recommendations found in this forum, do an advanced reboot, selecting Troubleshoot, and option F7 (temporarily disabling driver signature requirement for new drivers);
4- Install the latest Touchpad driver, which should now install properly. Select "Install anyway" when requested. Do not reboot, since this will not do anything to help. You should note that actually there is nothing new for now;
5- Go to Device Manager and check that you still have a generic mouse driver installed, under Mice and other pointing devices. Even though the new driver software is installed, it's simply not yet in place. Click on properties and select update driver;
6- Select "Browse my computer for driver software";
7- Select "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer";
6- Uncheck "Show compatible devices";
7- Select Synaptics as manufacturer and the driver on the right panel. Obviously it gives you the message "This driver is not digitally signed!". Just ignore it. Click on Next;
8- Once finished this process, reboot normally;

Thanks so much to Freedoomer for a beautiful set of instructions. I've just restarted my laptop about 15 times but I finally stopped the Charms from popping up all the time and interrupting full screen games. I actually couldn't use my laptop while drunk anymore because Charms kept taking me to Start menu too often.
I had v 17.0.9 of the Synaptics driver and Windows 8 refused to update to v 17.0.19 until I removed and uninstalled the old version and used all of Freedoomer's steps to make W8 accept the unsigned driver. Now to go ask Synaptics why after two years they still haven't fixed the certificate on their driver.

FrancesL · Apr 11, 2015

Oh, and unlike Voodoo Priest I found that I could change the settings to turn off inverted scrolling at the same time as I turned off edge swiping.

criscapelo · Jun 10, 2015

Hi all. I've registered after trying all methods here explained to tell you that the only way I've found to get rid of the *** charm bar on the edge of the touchpad is this:

It works!

bigtrees · Jul 16, 2015

Don't think it was lost on us that all your times were set to 4:20. lol

Brink · Jul 16, 2015

Hehe

Touchpad Edge Swipes - Enable or Disable in Windows 8

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Enable or Disable Synaptics Touchpad Edge Swipes in Properties

Enable or Disable Synaptics Touchpad Edge Swipes using a REG File

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To Enable or Disable Edge Swipes for Alps Touchpad

Enable or Disable "Precision Touchpad" Edge Swipes in Windows 8.1

Enable or Disable Precision Touchpad Edge Swipes in PC Settings

Enable or Disable Precision Touchpad Edge Swipes using a REG File

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