Logging Experiences

Enabling Middle Click in Synaptics Touchpad Drivers

Posted in Tips and Tricks by Sina Iravanian on April 16, 2011

Recently I upgraded my currently installed Synaptics touchpad driver to version 15.x, and I found that I cannot emulate the middle-click effect by pressing both right and left click buttons. I found no options in the settings to enable that functionality. Finally after searching the web I found a workaround here [+]:

  1. Run the registry editor (regedit)
  2. Go to key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Synaptics\SynTP\Defaults\
  3. Here create a new key as a DWORD and name it as 'HasBothButtonFeature' without the quotes and set the value to 1.
  4. Log off and Log on again

It worked fine for me.

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43 comments

43 Responses

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  1. Guesty said, on September 3, 2011 at 6:19 am

    Thank you so much for this! Most of the Synaptics drivers past v8 have removed this functionality, and I can’t imagine why. To find out that it is still possible with new drivers, but is not part of the driver GUI, only makes me more annoyed with them. Oh well =/ …

    Thanks again!!

    Reply
  2. Anonymous said, on September 18, 2011 at 7:59 am

    Thank you very much as well! 🙂

    Reply
  3. Chen said, on October 4, 2011 at 3:56 pm

    Thank you !!!

    Reply
  4. Anonymous said, on December 3, 2011 at 11:35 pm

    Worked perfectly! Thanks for the tip!

    Reply
  5. Anonymous said, on January 1, 2012 at 12:21 am

    Worked perfectly well.

    Reply
  6. Clement said, on February 1, 2012 at 1:24 am

    THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!! It becomes so incredibly annoying having to right click and then find “Open in New Tab” on my tiny netbook screen. This makes everything incredibly more convenient =D

    Reply
  7. Anonymous said, on February 16, 2012 at 1:00 am

    Thanks so much, this worked for me!

    Reply
  8. anon said, on March 1, 2012 at 1:26 pm

    Worked perfeclty! Thank you so much! I cannot believe they removed this feature.

    Reply
  9. Anonymus said, on May 6, 2012 at 2:10 pm

    Thanks!

    Reply
  10. Pablo said, on June 1, 2012 at 9:58 pm

    You are f*cking awesome, worked forme.

    Using Synaptics Touchpad V7.5 on HP G7.

    Reply
  11. jvd8977 said, on June 4, 2012 at 2:04 am

    Thanks so much for passing this along! Works like a charm.

    Reply
  12. Rory B said, on June 20, 2012 at 6:10 am

    I cannot thank you enough. I’m always weary about editing my registry, but i saw it working for everyone else and decided to give it a shot. I’m beyond happy i did. You rock!

    Reply
  13. Anonymous said, on June 21, 2012 at 6:33 pm

    Thankyou so much!

    Reply
  14. Paul said, on June 29, 2012 at 11:18 pm

    fantastic! Works great with the Windows 8 preview too!

    Reply
  15. Sudarshan S said, on July 3, 2012 at 2:03 pm

    Works for me (Windows 7 Home Premium x64 on a Dell Studio). Thanks! This is the one feature present in the dell driver that is absent in the official driver and now I have it working

    Reply
  16. BrunoMoraes said, on July 6, 2012 at 5:43 am

    Thanks, man! It was drivin’ me crazy here… Now it’s working perfectly!! Congrats!

    Reply
  17. Anonymous said, on August 2, 2012 at 2:15 am

    Awesome! Thank you I looked all over for this

    Reply
  18. Cardellos said, on August 19, 2012 at 8:00 pm

    Perfect Tks

    Reply
  19. Anonymous said, on September 20, 2012 at 2:50 am

    Thank you!!! Works like a charm.

    Reply
  20. Anonymous said, on October 29, 2012 at 11:58 am

    another thank you from me 😉

    Reply
  21. Selvan said, on November 21, 2012 at 3:43 am

    I was able to configure a middle-click action on the TouchPad v7.2 (Driver 14.0.19.0) of my Acer 5251.

    Control Panel + Mouse + Device Settings + Settings + Tapping + Enable Tapping + Tap Zones + Enable Tap Zones + Top Right Action (or any other of your choosing) + Middle Click (3rd from the top). NOTE: if enabling/using Tap Zones is new to you, I’d suggest you assign No Zone to all other areas (4 others).

    Reply
  22. David said, on December 26, 2012 at 7:45 am

    You are a LEGEND! Thank you for sharing this!

    Reply
  23. Anonymous said, on March 11, 2013 at 6:16 pm

    Thank you so fuckin much.

    Reply
  24. Anonymous said, on April 5, 2013 at 3:44 am

    Thank YOu

    Reply
  25. Josiah D. Pierson said, on April 11, 2013 at 1:57 pm

    I can’t believe it took a registry modification just to enable this standard functionality. How else am I supposed to middle click without a mouse? Thanks a ton!

    Reply
  26. Anonymous said, on November 27, 2013 at 11:02 pm

    What about pressing with 2 fingers to enable middle click, it enables right click by default. I changed the registry value from 2 to 4(middle click)

    Reply
  27. Selvan said, on November 28, 2013 at 5:26 pm

    On my Aspire 5251-1513 all I had to do was access the control panel. Driver version 14 is still the best matched per it’s search.

    Synaptics PS/2 Port TouchPad – Mice and other pointing devices

    Driver Provider: Synaptics
    Driver Date: 12/10/09
    Driver Version: 14.0.19.0
    Digital Signer: Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility Publisher

    Reply
  28. Anonymous said, on August 25, 2014 at 4:46 am

    Worked for me. Thank you!

    Reply
  29. antuerpo said, on November 8, 2014 at 3:33 am

    PROBLEM:

    Win7 x64 SYnaptic Driver v16.3.8.8.3/Jan2013
    …everytime I boot or even just logout the “ACtivateMouse Buttons” OPtion (i.e. just “Buttons”) is disabled…having to “tapit” through to the control panel Mouse -setting and check the “buttons” box so that the buttons of the touchpad work!!!

    Reply
  30. Anonymous said, on November 14, 2014 at 6:48 am

    Thank you very much. Very useful post.

    Reply
  31. Anonymous said, on December 29, 2014 at 6:44 pm

    thank u so much it worked

    Reply
  32. mihaiil said, on January 1, 2015 at 5:36 pm

    Thanks buddy!

    Reply
  33. Stratos said, on March 18, 2015 at 9:19 pm

    Does it work on windows 8?

    Reply
  34. ThomasM Tulinsky said, on March 22, 2015 at 6:02 am

    thanks it worked. may there be peace between our countries.–from the USA

    Reply
  35. Anonymous said, on March 28, 2015 at 6:26 pm

    You are awesome!! Thanks

    Reply
  36. Anonymous said, on July 26, 2015 at 10:16 pm

    Yaaay it worked 😀 thanks

    Reply
  37. Msi said, on August 28, 2015 at 6:08 am

    I use windows 10 and have synaptic ClickPad V7.5
    Where are the settings for changing the mouse buttons?

    Reply
    • Msi said, on August 28, 2015 at 6:16 am

      Never mind. Just updated synaptic

      Reply
  38. Deemonie said, on January 27, 2016 at 6:59 pm

    Dude, it’s 2016, this worked perfectly, thank you, you’re the man!

    Reply
  39. jo3 said, on February 22, 2016 at 8:16 pm

    Dunno why, doesn’t work for me. I used to modyfi register quite often with good results, but this one don’t work. I don’t know what to do… I added this key in some places without reaction. Does reinstall of synaptics driver can help? Or delete all of synaptic registers?

    Reply
  40. paulcarew said, on February 22, 2017 at 1:56 pm

    Worked for me on Windows 10

    Reply
  41. Anonymous said, on September 15, 2017 at 9:05 am

    I’ve been using this trick for year, and now it’s stopped working. I’m using an HP Elitebook 840 G4 with HP Synaptics v 19.3.8.22 drivers. I’ve also tried the 2 and 3 finger tap registry trick as well, and nothing has worked yet. Anyone have any ideas?

    Reply

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