I think that Tap to Click is a very important setting and should be on by default. Without this setting using a laptop touchpad in GNOME is quite awkward. I I committed to trying the default without tap to click for multiple months to see if I could get used to it before making this suggestion however, it never got better and instead it consistently got in the way.
Today I turned it on and the entire experience changed from being problematic to use GNOME to rather enjoyable. I became more accurate with my clicks because everything was easier to activate and work with. This increased the ease of use dramatically.
In fact, I don't understand why GNOME chose to make it off by default, I see no practical value for that.
My understanding is that long ago, the average laptop trackpad was quite bad at tap registration, so the experience was so inconsistent that it was a bad idea to have it on by default. But every laptop I've got on hand that has been produced in the past decade seems to handle it consistently well in Linux, so I think it'd be worth it to consider switching this on by default in Fedora Linux, if not in GNOME upstream.
Metadata Update from @ngompa: - Issue tagged with: experience
For what it's worth, this setting is one of the first things I turn on too. It's something I expect to work right out of the gate, and I expect many others do too.
Your issue seems to be a capability detection problem. I worked on the Mouse Settings in GNOME back then and I recall that we check for touchpad capabilities in order to decide the defaults for tap-to-click, two-finger-scrolling, etc...
See https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/-/blob/master/panels/mouse/cc-mouse-caps-helper.c
There's also Wayland vs X11 at play in this detection code.
I think we're supposed to have tap-to-click enabled by default if you have a clickpad, but not for traditional touchpads with the big left and right click buttons (e.g. as on ThinkPads). Is that right?
This should likely be tackled upstream first. Is there a GNOME ticket?
Where would it go in GNOME?
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gsettings-desktop-schemas/-/issues , I think
Maybe this? It's 2 years old. I also have a Thinkpad that this isn't enabled by default on, and it's one of the first things I change, even for throw away test user accounts. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gsettings-desktop-schemas/-/issues/17
That issue is clearly requesting the opposite behavior change vs. the change requested here.
I still think that this issue is better tracked upstream than in the Working Group issue tracker. If there isn't an existing upstream issue for gsettings-desktop-schemas, please create one. Thanks!
Metadata Update from @aday: - Issue close_status updated to: Deferred to upstream - Issue status updated to: Closed (was: Open)
Upstream ticket: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gsettings-desktop-schemas/-/issues/41
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