Touchpad ‘Tap clicking’ function seems to be not working in most GNOME login screen out-of-the-box.
So far, most Gnome based systems, e.g., Ubuntu, Fedora, and Manjaro Gnome, do not function when tapping on login screen. And ‘Tap to Click’ becomes one of the top things to do after installing these Linux Distros.
Fortunately, it’s easy to enable this feature. All you have to do is just copy and paste the commands below and run one by one.
Enable Tap to Click for Gnome Login Screen:
First, search for and open terminal from your system application launcher.
When terminal opens, run command to add local use gdm to the control list:
xhost SI:localuser:gdm
Finally, enable ‘tap-to-click’ option via gdm user by running command:
sudo -u gdm gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad tap-to-click true
For some Linux Distros, e.g., Manjaro, you have to add dbus-launch option to bypass a dconf warning issue. So the command will be:
sudo -u gdm dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad tap-to-click true
In addition, you can first install “Dconf Editor” from Software Center. Then launch it via gdm user privilege:
xhost SI:localuser:gdm && sudo -u gdm dbus-launch dconf-editor
When it opens, you can go to ‘org/gnome/desktop/peripherals.touchpad‘ and toggle more touchpad settings.
NOTE: these settings apply only for login screen. For user sessions, go to "System Settings -> Mouse & Touchpad" or open Dconf Editor normally from app launcher.
