Dr Andrew Scott G7VAV

MBCS, MIET, Member ACM, Member IEEE

Senior Lecturer
School of Computing
and Communications

D35 InfoLab21
Lancaster University
Lancaster, LA1 4WA
United Kingdom

November 2025
27	28	29	30	31	1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
1	2	3	4	5	6	7

syndaemon

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: xf86-input-synaptics 1.6.2
Index Return to Main Contents

NAME

syndaemon - a program that monitors keyboard activity and disables the touchpad when the keyboard is being used.

SYNOPSIS

syndaemon [-i idle-time] [-m poll-inverval] [-d] [-p pid-file] [-t] [-k] [-K] [-R]

DESCRIPTION

Disabling the touchpad while typing avoids unwanted movements of the pointer that could lead to giving focus to the wrong window.

OPTIONS

-i <idle-time>: How many seconds to wait after the last key press before enabling the touchpad. (default is 2.0s).

-m <poll-interval>: How many milliseconds to wait between two polling intervals. If this value is too low, it will cause unnecessary wake-ups. If this value is too high, some key presses (press and release happen between two intervals) may not be noticed. This switch has no effect when running with -R. Default is 200ms.

-d: Start as a daemon, ie in the background.

-p <pid-file>: Create a pid file with the specified filename. A pid file will only be created if the program is started in daemon mode.

-t: Only disable tapping and scrolling, not mouse movements, in response to keyboard activity.

-k: Ignore modifier keys when monitoring keyboard activity.

-K: Like -k but also ignore Modifier+Key combos.

-R: Use the XRecord extension for detecting keyboard activity instead of polling the keyboard state.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

DISPLAY: Specifies the X server to contact.

EXIT CODES

If syndaemon exists with a return code other than 0, the error encountered is as below.

Exit code 1: Invalid commandline argument.

Exit code 2
The connection to the X sever could not be established or no touchpad device could be found.

Exit code 3
The fork into daemon mode failed or the pid file could not be created.

Exit code 4
XRECORD requested but not available or usable on the server.

CAVEATS

It doesn't make much sense to connect to a remote X server, because the daemon will then monitor the remote server for keyboard activity, but will disable the touchpad on the local machine.