Touchscreen laptops are easy to use. Touch provides faster navigation and optimizes your computer for touch-oriented features and applications.
The touchscreen is the default feature on touchscreen laptops and 2-in-1 tablets. But what if you want to disable the touchscreen and use other input methods? Could it be that your PC’s touchscreen is unstable or defective? You can disable the touchscreen until you find a solution.
Although laptops vary in brand and design, the steps for disabling the touchscreen on all Windows devices are the same. It doesn’t matter if your laptop belongs to HP, Lenovo, Dell, or Acer. The methods described in this tutorial will work great on your device.
You can disable the laptop touchscreen using three system tools built into the Windows operating system: Device Manager, Windows Registry, and Powershell. We’ll show you how to use these tools to disable the touchscreen on your laptop.
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Turn Off Touch Screen from the Registry Editor:
The Windows registry stores important configuration files and settings for your computer’s hardware and software. You can turn off your PC’s touchscreen by creating an “emergency switch” that disables touch input in the registry.
This may sound a bit technical, but it’s easy. Also, this method comes in handy if the Device Manager on your PC is not working as expected.
Before showing you the steps, we strongly recommend that you are backup your registry or create a system restore point. Deleting or corrupting any registry file can damage the Windows operating system and render some system programs unusable.
If something goes wrong when you turn off the touchscreen, a backup can restore missing or damaged files and fix registry errors.
Press Windows Key + R to open the Windows Run dialog box. Alternatively, right-click the start menu icon and select Run from the shortcut menu.
Type Regedit in the dialog’s search box and press Enter or click on OK.
Paste Computer HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Microsoft Wisp Touch into the address bar of the registry editor and press Enter.
To create an emergency switch, right-click a space in the Touch folder, select New, and select DWORD (32-bit) Value.
Give a new name to the new registry value TouchGate and press Enter.
Double-click TouchGate, make sure the Value Date is set to 0 and click OK.
Then restart your laptop for the changes to take effect.
To re-enable touch on your PC from the Windows registry, go to Computer HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Microsoft Wisp Touch, double-click TouchGate, set Value date to 1, and select OK.
Then restart your computer to restore the touch screen function.
Device Manager is a system application that allows you to manage hardware components on your Windows PC. By disabling the touch driver, you can turn off your PC’s touch screen.
Press Windows + X or right-click the Start menu icon and select Device Manager from the shortcut menu.
Expand the Human Interface Devices category.
Press right-click the HID-compliant touch screen and then click on Disable Device.
Alternatively, select a driver and click the black down arrow icon in the toolbar.
Select Yes at the confirmation prompt to turn off the computer’s touchscreen.
If more than one touchscreen device is listed under Human Interface Devices, disable all of them and check if that turns off your PC’s touchscreen.
To re-enable the touchscreen in Device Manager, select touchscreen drivers and tap the green up arrow in the toolbar.
You can also press right-click on the driver and select Enable Device.
It is not recommended to disable the laptop touchscreen if the display is the only input method. This is because you cannot re-enable the touchscreen. Therefore, make sure you have other input devices (external keyboard or mouse) close at hand before turning off your computer’s touchscreen.
Windows Powershell is another powerful system tool that you can use to change your computer’s hardware.
Right-click the Start button, or press Windows Key + X and select Windows PowerShell (Admin).
If you cannot find “Windows Powershell (Admin)” in the shortcut menu, enter PowerShell in the Windows search bar and select “Run as administrator” in the search results.
Paste the below command into the Powershell terminal and press Enter.
Get-PnpDevice | Where-Object {$ _. FriendlyName -like ‘* touch screen * ’} | Disable-PnpDevice -Confirm: $ false
PowerShell may display an error (like in the image below) when running the command. Ignore the error message. Our test devices (HP and Lenovo laptops) no longer detected touch input despite this error message.
To re-enable the touchscreen via PowerShell, paste the below command into a terminal and press Enter.
Get-PnpDevice | Where-Object {$ _. FriendlyName -like ‘* touch screen * ’} | Enable-UPnp Device -Confirm: $ false
Again, PowerShell may display a different error message. Ignore the error and touch the computer screen. It should be responsive to touch input without any problem. Otherwise, try the command again and restart your computer.
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These are currently the accepted methods of disabling touch screen input on Windows computers. You don’t have to use all the techniques; could do the job. Make sure you follow the instructions above. Then restart your computer and back up your files if necessary.