Enabling 3 finger tap middle click and other functions on Elan touchpads (Zenbooks, etc.)

DISCLAIMER: Any mods to the registry, including whatever that is mentioned in this post, may brick your windows installation. All mods are done at your own risk and i am not responsible for ANY issues that may arise as a result of any instruction you may have followed in this thread.

You need to be on the elan drivers, the one with the elan configuration panel. not the one with Asus Smart Gesture.

Link to the Elan touchpad driver for UX31A as follows.
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B93qmqYil_3TQlhyaEdyT05GWlE

The following steps will enable menus that relate to functions that are hidden by default.
1) Start > type "regedit" and press enter to start Registry Editor
2) Go to HKEY_Current_User\Software\Elantech\SmartPadDisplay
3) For all REG_DWORD keys, set hex value to 1
4) To enable 3 finger tap, go to HKEY_Current_User\Software\Elantech\SmartPad, set hex value of Tap3_Press_Enable to 1
5) From windows taskbar, double click to open the Elan config panel
6) Notice that many new settings are avail. Set whatever u need to and Apply. NOTE: upon closing the panel, the next time the config panel is launched, the items that are hidden by default will not appear. Youd have to do the registry edits to make them appear again.

Personal suggestions:
3 finger tap for middle click (you should see this as a dropdown menu under the tapping panel)
3/4 finger swipe functions
Under "Additional" tab, "Palm Tracking" set to maximum. <= this makes the touchpad a whole lot more well behaved when you are typing.

 

missed out the registry key edit to enable 3 finger taps. included as step 4.

 

Quick question that I never got an answer for. Does Elan offer a circular scroll option anywhere? It's vastly superior to all other forms of scrolling and I'd hate to lose it. Currently have it on my Sony that uses Synaptics.

I really hate all these dumb gestures that everyone is trying to include. I want side-of-touchpad scroll, circular scrolling, and pinch to zoom. Everything else is blah and unnecessary imo.

 

there are registry keys related to circular scroll but ive not tried them out. u may wanna experiment with them. located in HKEY_Current_User\Software\Elantech\SmartPad

CircularScroll_Enable
CircularScroll_ShowItem

the edge scrolling option appears when u do the registry edits in my OP try and see if they worked for u. The only ones ive tried so far is the 3 finger tap for middle click and the palm tracking. both of which works perfectly.

there are alot of other registry keys to experiment with which ive not personally tried as my main objective was to enable the 3 finger middle click.

 

pinch to zoom works. its avail as an option by default.

 

I can't seem to enable 4-finger swipe. I edited the registry keys, but it doesn't show up in the ELAN control panel. Also, is there a way to make 4-finger swipe left/right a home/end function? It would be really convenient since the Zenbook Prime doesn't have dedicated home/end keys.

 

thanks for the reg edits...the elan drivers and fast gesture options made me love my trackpad now!

 

Kind of wonder why they haven't enabled a few of the options at asus, right..?

Here's a link to the touchpad drivers at asus.com, by the way.
ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Drivers and Download Touchpad
This isn't to a particular model - it's the latest driver they have on the site, sorted by touchpad driver version.

 

i can't figure out how to get the middle click option... i don't get the dropdown menu.. what could i be doing wrong?

middle click is my favorite click.

 

Are you saying that these options can be enabled for the ASUS drivers too? Just confused as to the link post.

 

Is there anyway to configure the functions of certain gestures? Like can I make four finger swipe right to be say CTRL+SHIFT+R so then I can use some other software to attach a function to CTRL+SHIFT+R?

 

Yes. The driver on asus' site is a barely repackaged standard-driver.

And until they go ahead and replace that driver package shell with the "SmartAwesomeSuperGesture" horror again, you can enable those options with the registry editor in the installed elantech driver.

I just meant that if Asus' aftermarket service wasn't run by people who think removing options for users, no matter what those options were == a better user-experience, then they could have added those options in the menu. And maybe even chosen a more useful setup as default..

Because not everyone wants inertial scroll, not everyone wants double-taps and three-finger swipes. A lot of people like to change the sensitivity of the pad. Most people want to know where they can hit the pad while they're writing, without producing a click. They might want to know how long it takes after you stop typing before the pad is active again.

 

I have a Samsung Series 5 535 with an Elan Touchpad. This touchpad only seems to be capable of 3 finger multitouch. (ETDDeviceInformation.exe only shows "Finger Number: 3" when 4 fingers are touched) I ended up removing the driver and reinstalling from the samsung website ( Support - Series 5 Notebooks NP535U4C | Samsung Laptops - version 4.5.0.0) because I had messed it up trying to follow instructions for other computers and messed something up.

Also, I should specify that changing the display registry folder had no effect for me except to enable the four finger scroll option, which doesn't work for me anyway.


So, for the Samsung, this is really easy to do if all you want is a three-finger tap == middle mouse button:


1. Go to HKCU\Software\Elantech\SmartPad

2. Set the key "Tap3_Press_Enable" to value "1" (if that doesn't work, this also worked for me: Create this DWORD key: "Tap_Three_Finger_Enable" and set the value to "1")

3. Set the key "Tap_Three_Finger" to value "2"

4. Restart the computer

Boom! Done, I now have three-finger tap as middle button!

 

Hmm, the elan touch pad on my ux32vd can recognize 4 fingers. You just can't choose what it does tho. By default, mine does swipe up, go to desktop, and swipe down, bring up 3d task manager thingy.

 

Alright. I'm a little late to the party here. I've gone through installing 5 or 6 versions of the Elantech drivers, from various other manufacturers, attempting to get a various selection of functions (two finger tap, two and three finger click, and four finger swipe) to work on my UX32VD. The most recent drivers I've found are version 11.14.1.3, as distributed by Gigabyte for their U2442 laptop. However, try as I might, I cannot enable four finger swipe on these drivers.

The driver version 11.6.8.001, as distributed by Acer for their Aspire M3-581PT, despite being older, seems to be the best fit. I've been able to turn on four finger swiping up and down, three finger swiping up and down, two-finger tap (without click) for middle click, three finger tap and click, as well as ramping up the palm detection sensitivity. Also, both these versions include the Windows 8 edge swipe functions (charms bar/app switcher) -- I assume, having looked at the installer .inf file, they'll work fine in Win7 as well.

Some of the features require registry tweaking -- I keep referring back to this pastebin and this french page (throw it through google translate, and search for 'smartpad' to see the sections on the touchpad).

The one function I've not yet been able to turn on with these drivers is three finger side-to-side swipe for back/forward in the browser/explorer. This worked on essentially every other driver version I tried, so I think it can be activated -- I just need to go back and look at the registry settings again.

I haven't attempted to turn on four finger side-to-side swipe, because, frankly, there's only so much room on the trackpad, and only so many functions I can think to bind.

(Now to go find a macbook and see how they do it, so I can get some ideas on how to make all this gesturing work for me.)

Edit: After a few more tweaks and a few reboots, three finger left-right swiping works, too. So that's everything. It's wonderful.

Edit2: Adding my registry export. It has everything working, in a way I find reasonably pleasant. You can start from here and tweak further, if you like. View attachment elantech settings (Acer 11.6.8.001 tweaked).reg.zip

 

That was very useful, thanks!

 

I'm trying to set swipe left and right with three fingers to previous page/next page in my elan settings. It's very difficult to understand what all the registry keys are.

 

If you grab the latest (April 26) from the Asus site below, there is a setting to 3-finger swipe left/right to go back and forth for instance in a web browser without the need to enter the registry.

What I'm trying to figure out however, is how to get these varying settings to show up in the UI. It could very well be that the UI has changed, such that all the UI elements are hard-coded. No matter what I do, nothing changes, even when I attempt to *remove* elements that are shown. After I edit the "showsettings" elements, I terminate the UI and tray exe in the task manager and then restart it. Nothing changes. If you restart the actual Elan service, all registry settings are restored back to their original settings. By the way, I haven't tried any of the previous versions of the driver, but there are a ton of settings in there, way more than what Synaptics has from what I've seen. It's just incredible that the UI has only a tiny fraction of the available settings.

Question: For those that have been successful in changing displayed UI elements, does the top of the UI read "Asus Smart Gestures"? It seems that this may work if the UI were the unbranded or uncustomized Elan UI rather than the Asus-specific dumbed-down version.

 

anyone know how to change the 2 finger tap to middle click?

 

Was looking for a solution to this myself, but couldn't find anyone with an answer, so I fiddled with the registry myself.

1. Go to HKCU\Software\Elantech\SmartPad
2. Make sure Tap_Two_Finger_Enable is set at 1
3. Change Tap_Two_Finger to 2

Works perfectly!

 

Has anyone figured out registry settings to change the touch sensitivity for JUST tap to click? I'm finding that either tap to click is too sensitive, or multi-finger swipes are not sensitive enough.

 

Or, put another way--

Is anyone happy with how tap to click works on their device? If so, could you share which drivers you're using and/or registry settings?

 

Hello , i just bought a Lenovo Ideapad t510p....it's amazing but i hate the touchpad...its ELAN and it wont let me modify the touchpad area...the buttons are integrated in the touchpad and it makes it very hard for me to click them without moving the cursor...i tried reducing sensivity but its not enough...can i reduche the touchpad ara through the registry? i tried doing it by the driver's options but it doesnt show up...
i went into the registry ediotr and i found some files regarding a Smartarea...could it be that?
one of them is SmartArea_Enable... i changed the number from 0 to 1 , but still it doesnt show up in the driver options...maybe i have to modify the other files from the registry? like SmartArea_Left_Range , SmartArea_Down_Range ecc ecc...should i modify these?
I also found other ones like PST_StartZone_Top or PST_Startzone_Bottom...i couldnt find any clue on the internet...
any idea?

 

Just wanted to add on to this because it's the first link that comes up on Google. The original post didn't have the desired effects for me (the "3-finger press" mentioned is intended to launch a specific application and there were no drop-down menus that appeared in the ElanTech driver configuration after installing the different drivers and modding the registries).

Instead of uninstalling Asus' smart gestures and installing the "vanilla" Elantech drivers (which also requires uninstalling Asus' ATK Package which will consequently disable some of your function keys, USB charger, and may also have other ill-advised effects) there is a very simple fix to get a 3-finger tap to act as a "middle click". I found the solution here, btw, 3 finger middle click (not 3 middle fingers) | mikemurko

Open up Regedit and go to the same place as the original post mentions: HKEY_Current_User\Software\Elantech\SmartPad
This time, however, simply change the value "Tap_Three_Finger" to "2" (mine was also set to "7" by default)
--edit--
Forgot to mention that you have to restart your computer after editing the registry!

 

I found another solution - Samsung Elan driver. IMHO it is perfect - customizable via GUI, no need for reg tweaks. Works flawlessly. Link - https://yadi.sk/d/OjhS4tMXZYSmz

 

Hey there, I have a Sager NP4658 (Clevo W650SF) laptop with an Elan touchpad, and I was just using an Acer V3-571 laptop (also has ELan) on backup for a few weeks while I waited for my main laptop to get repaired. With the Acer laptop, I found and enabled an option to do a 2-finger tap to middle click through the ELan control panel and found it extremely useful. Well, my main laptop came back, and I found that the ELan control panel on my Sager is missing a lot of options, including the ability to two-finger tap.

First off, I tried downloading the ELan driver from the Acer V3-571 driver download page, and noticed that only resulted in "Touchpad not detected", so I had to revert back to the driver from Sager to get the touchpad enhancements working. So then I discovered this thread, which looks very promising. The problem is, I apply these registry mods, nothing happens. When I reboot, the registry settings had been reverted back to the state before I did the changes.

Can anyone help me?

Registry tweaks attempted:
1. HKCU\Software\Elantech\SmartPad
2. Tap_Two_Finger_Enable from 0 to 1
3. Tap_Two_Finger from 7 to 2

 

Anybody know what the registry key is for two-finger swipes acting as your browser back/forward buttons? I got used to having that in Windows 7, and now that I've upgraded to 10 finally, I lost a lot of that stuff with the latest ELAN drivers. Registry edits have gotten everything else back, but nothing I've tried has worked so far with two-finger swipes. Alternatively, anybody know what version of the drivers I'd need to roll back to in order to get it?

 

Will this work on a asus ux303LN

 

Kind of late, but turns out that there does in fact exists a semi-official asus-packaged ELAN driver that identifies the touchpad correctly, and works with various registry settings, allows multitouch clicks, etc. It does not have a control panel, but the default package does not come with broken resource-draining "helper" functions, and does not add the direct calls to acpi that increases cpu speed for no reason, screws over practically every other acpi-type function running on the computer, or prevent wakes and other various control functions from working.

Basically, any asus laptop can install this, also on Win10, and see instant improvement on smoother scroll as well as battery life and stability in general. It's essentially the core ELAN driver without the "supersmartgesture" stuff running on top of it.

http://www.asus.com/support/Download/3/589/0/21/41/

 

Just wanted to bump this as a PSA of sorts, since a windows update a few weeks ago actually would do a silent uninstall of the mentioned elantech driver. And then somehow also fail to install Asus' now presumably submitted new driver properly, or identify the touchpad with the specific keyed ID in the asus branding.

If people are not familiar with this entire story about the unbridled brilliance of Asus' support folks. Then the short version is that you cannot install a generic elantech driver on any of the asus touchpads, since this driver lacks the magic Microsaft certificate needed to identify the OEM-specific IDs used in the acpi-calls (read: a specific but not implicitly known address. The address is contained in the MS database. So that you essentially cannot install a driver other than the one your vendor pays MS to certify. Because reasons).

This ID isn't magical or unknown or encrypted or anything, so as long as this driver knows the address, there's no problem. But it has to be "signed"(read: the inf-files need to identify the touchpad - similar process and toolchain solution as the other hotkey-related tools). And you can't simply override this signing process or replace the driver's ID and address (at least since Win8). So they've effectively created a way to "protect" the entirely generic touchpad hardware from being used with entirely generic touchpad software.

Which likely wouldn't have given a single customer a second thought normally. But the only "officially" available touchpad driver Asus has is the one that comes with their "SmartGesture" software.

Just to describe how dumb this is: This isn't actually the program that provides the functionality, this comes from the Elantech touchpad package. Which has several other functions in addition to the ones made available in the Smartigestures. On top of this, the Smartgesture package also silently sets a number of options in the driver that you cannot change. This is things like sensitivity and acceleration settings, timeout for disabling the driver when you type, etc., etc.

The worst part here is something else, however. Once you install the standard touchpad driver, every single Asus customer, on every single computer, model and brand variant Asus has ever made. You will notice something curious.

And it is that the processor state is locked at the highest possible frequency when this driver is installed. Somehow the battery is drained on battery-mode, with forced downclocks, no matter what you do. When this driver is installed.

I couldn't figure it out, until I started decompiling the SMARTIGESTURE software, and found out that the helper functions in this software is actually constantly polling the acpi-functions to peak the processor state.

I thought there had to be some sort of mistake: why in the ampersand-slash-semicolon-numberdash would a touchpad driver bump the processor? Why would a software package like that even have these functions? Why would a vendor hotspike acpi-calls like this that supercede the intel package? Why would they possibly risk all the conflicts and problems that this specific process creates during and after wake-ups? After all, 100% of the "stuff happens after wake-up" on asus laptops comes from, you guessed it, wrong nesting of acpi-calls. It's a well-known problem that engages support in very likely a huge amount of cases, so why would this be there?

I look at this, and I frown a bit. So I write asus support, and wait three weeks. And there's actually a response (that's been posted here in full on the forum elsewhere). Where a helpful but very annoyed support-person points out that this - forcing the processor to increase - is a function that is meant to be there.

I ask why, for goodness sakes, why is this there? And the guy explains in a roundabout fashion that support has been contacted, and reviews have mentioned, that the asus scrolling is not as "smooth" as the scroll in for example a Mac.

And the solution they came up with was to hotspike the processor at the instance of a scroll-event. To make sure that once the scrolling has begun, the processor is peaking out at max processor speed. Because maxing the processor somehow increases the rate at which the mouse-scroll is updated.

I explain that.. since .. 1997 or so.. this has not been how interrupts on a bus is handled. And that since the WDM-convention with the new display manager in Windows was actually enforced in 2014 for all computers (to prevent people from using "direct drawing" to "get more graphics POWER!" and things like that - there is no software component in the scrolling function that could possibly affect the rate that the page will scroll with.

So the idea that bumping the processor from 700Mhz to 2800Mhz (and increasing the battery drain from 4w to 30w) is going to marginally increase the scrolling smoothness. This is so dumb that it defies any kind of description. The only way it would /indirectly/ help is if you 1. disabled the Windows window manager's indirect rendering through the registry. And 2. was scrolling a web-page full of extremely heavy maths that was a) exactly too complicated to complete at 700Mhz in 16.6ms. But nevertheless not as complicated as to still b) complete in more the 16.6ms at 2800Mhz.

It's a super-specialized even that normally cannot happen.

But the Asus guys simply angrily denies this and insists that bumping the processor speed increases the mouse scroll, because higher processor power equals Macintosh scroll, because reasons, and I'm stupid, and his father is more powerful than mine. And this will not be changed, and your computer will go into overdrive every time you scroll a web-page. Or don't scroll a web-page, but is simply scrolling into nowhere where the scroll-event itself isn't picked up. The acpi-override still is called.

Meaning that on all asus-laptops sold since at least 2010. And certainly on all asus laptops updated in the last five years with "later" drivers, including the one from Microsoft through the Win10 install. Will have this braindead "feature" if you install SmartGesture on top of it.

However, it turns out that the unSmartGestured package is available.

http://www.asus.com/support/Download/3/589/0/21/41/

And that the ROG-driver also installs (it's the same as the one here, just with added ROG stuff).

And if you install this driver, after removing the smartgesture horror. You can have two-finger scroll and any of the other functions through the elantech panel. And also add the reasonably well known registry switches to further customize your driver if you would like to.

But most importantly, your battery is not going to be drained for no reason. And your computer will stop mysteriously hanging and screwing up every bloody acpi-event and device you own, at every single sleep and wake.

So if you wonder why your computer for example lose usb-hubs after you open the lid. Or why the computer shuts down irregularly after a hibernate. Or why the performance of the computer seems so weird and irregular. Or why you suddenly lose focus in the browser or any window for no reason, or why the event-log is full of thousands of acpi-error lists that you cannot identify.

Then this is it. The ****ing smartgesture package, that Asus have inserted an override call to acpi in order to boost the processor state.

This is perhaps even dumber than the way they have tweaked their bios - on all Asus laptops. By forcing the ram-timing to a mild overclock on all consumer-brand and ROG laptops alike (because someone at Asus can't tell the difference between sdram and ddr3 ram). That in the end annoyed even the ROG-folks so much that the official ROG tool hijacks the ram-timing through enabling xtu in the bios for those specific devices. So the ram-timing can finally be set to something sane. It does, however, involve a programmatical hot-function acpi-call through a client application. Because that's just how Asus works.

That's not even to go into the entire "forced Windows media player media keys" on the keyboard. Through this aforementioned acpi-package - that indeed Asus buys, for money, from Microsoft. In order to enable this fantastic service for you. Although I suppose the cost is recuperated slightly by how the keyboard now forcibly launches windows products.

In any case.

So install this elantech mouse-driver that has been packaged with the Asus IDs. Keep this package you've installed. And overwrite the "updated" driver package from Windows update, and uninstall any Smartgesture driver that sneaks itself on your computer with this one.

And I would advise you to buy a different brand in the future if you want to avoid this. But ther isn't any that doesn't have this same attitude towards branding and OEM specific acpi-device calls. So you're clean out of luck if you want to use software and drivers that have not been crippled in amazingly imaginative ways by mentally challenged morons hired by said OEM, to "help you" with your "support issues".

So what you want to do with your next laptop purchase is this: find out which brand (i.e. Clevo, Lenovo, whatever) that functions the most completely with your standard Linux distro. Do they employ complex wmi functionality for their keyboard shortcuts that is impossible to use - toss it. And then choose this laptop that does not have these "extra functions" through the WMI-model and extended Microsaft acpi-call structure.

They cost money for the OEM, and therefore increase your purchase cost. And the functionality you "gain" here is ruining your laptop experience as well.

For the reason that a select few whining idiots have gotten it into their heads that the brand will sell better if they boost the clock-speed. To make time flow faster, or even go backwards!.. something.