This has bugged me since I got a ThinkPad X270, so much so that I actually found/made time for Frustration Driven Development, figured out a patch for the source code, built the kernel and tested it out. This has MASSIVELY IMPROVED my laptop experience. Honestly, not overstating that. Due to the Synaptics driver doing tap-to-click by default I would frequently make mis-clicks with my palm, etc when typing and would often mis-click and accidentally drag tabs, etc in Firefox. I was coming very close to disabling the trackpad altogether and using the pointer instead, but then “solved” half the problem by disabling mouse mode in Helix - although it was still annoying me elsewhere.

I patched it so tap to click is the default behaviour and I can just easily disable via sudo sysctl -w hw.synaptics.tap_to_click=0:

--- /usr/src/sys/dev/pckbport/synaptics.c.orig	2024-06-22 11:02:05.000000000 +0100
+++ /usr/src/sys/dev/pckbport/synaptics.c	2026-04-22 17:21:33.087414774 +0100
@@ -118,6 +118,7 @@
 static int synaptics_button_boundary = SYNAPTICS_EDGE_BOTTOM;
 static int synaptics_button2;
 static int synaptics_button3;
+static int synaptics_tap_to_click = 1;
 static int synaptics_two_fingers_emul = 0;
 static int synaptics_scale_x = 8;
 static int synaptics_scale_y = 8;
@@ -155,6 +156,7 @@
 static int synaptics_edge_motion_delta_nodenum;
 static int synaptics_finger_high_nodenum;
 static int synaptics_finger_low_nodenum;
+static int synaptics_tap_to_click_nodenum;
 static int synaptics_two_fingers_emul_nodenum;
 static int synaptics_scale_x_nodenum;
 static int synaptics_scale_y_nodenum;
@@ -865,6 +867,18 @@
 
 	if ((rc = sysctl_createv(clog, 0, NULL, &node,
 	    CTLFLAG_PERMANENT | CTLFLAG_READWRITE,
+	    CTLTYPE_INT, "tap_to_click",
+	    SYSCTL_DESCR("Enable tap to click"),
+	    pms_sysctl_synaptics_verify, 0,
+	    &synaptics_tap_to_click,
+	    0, CTL_HW, root_num, CTL_CREATE,
+	    CTL_EOL)) != 0)
+		goto err;
+
+	synaptics_tap_to_click_nodenum = node->sysctl_num;
+
+	if ((rc = sysctl_createv(clog, 0, NULL, &node,
+	    CTLFLAG_PERMANENT | CTLFLAG_READWRITE,
 	    CTLTYPE_INT, "two_fingers_emulation",
 	    SYSCTL_DESCR("Map two fingers to middle button"),
 	    pms_sysctl_synaptics_verify, 0,
@@ -1101,6 +1115,10 @@
 		if (t < 0 || t > 3)
 			return (EINVAL);
 	} else
+	if (node.sysctl_num == synaptics_tap_to_click_nodenum) {
+		if (t < 0 || t > 1)
+			return (EINVAL);
+	} else
 	if (node.sysctl_num == synaptics_two_fingers_emul_nodenum) {
 		if (t < 0 || t > 2)
 			return (EINVAL);
@@ -2293,7 +2311,7 @@
 	/*
 	 * Do gesture processing only if we didn't detect a palm.
 	 */
-	if (palm == 0)
+	if (palm == 0 && synaptics_tap_to_click)
 		synaptics_gesture_detect(sc, sp, fingers);
 	else
 		sc->gesture_type = sc->gesture_buttons = 0;

I haven’t noticed any downsides to this at all yet. I have physical buttons that I can use for clicking anyway PLUS it turns out if I press hard enough (I’d never done this because of tap-to-click) on the trackpad it actually physically clicks (and that still registers as a click with this patch).

I must be some kind of freak for hating tap to click (I hate it on macOS as well) since no one has bothered to change this over the years. Or even moaned that much about it.

I couldn’t recall trackpad usage on my previous NetBSD laptop being this bad, but then I looked up that hardware and realised it didn’t have a trackpad.