This is a small guide on to how to get two finger scrolling and other multi touch gestures on your Windows laptop. Even if your laptop is already capable of scrolling using two fingers, this guide can still be worth reading, since according to my experience the “feeling” can likely be significantly improved!
Introduction
With a brand new Win7 laptop in front of me I expected the touchpad to deliver a modern multi touch gesture experience. If you have used an Apple laptop and scrolled webpages by dragging two fingers on the touchpad instead of fiddling with a scrollbar, you know what I mean. Unfortunately my hopes faded rather quickly when I discovered that the trackpad seemed to lack support for multi touch gestures. But I refused to accept this, and after some diligent searching and testing I have finally found a solution that works for me.
Step 1: Update the drivers
The first thing I did was to dig through the driver settings. Imagine my surprise when I couldn’t find any settings for two finger scrolling. However, there were a few other options, indicating that the touchpad was actually capable of detecting more than one finger at a time. Having investiged this it turns out that the drivers shipped with the computer simply did not contain support for two finger scrolling even though the hardware itself supported it!
The dominant producer of touchpads for portable computers and other devices is called Synaptics. This corporation delivers touchpads to several major computer manufacturers. But as I understand it, patent issues causes many computer manufacturers to not ship the “full” drivers. Instead you get a crippled version where functionality has been removed. There is an easy solution to this though. You can get the full drivers by simply downloading them directly from Synaptics support page.
So I got the real drivers and a number of new options appeared in the driver settings, including the desired option to use two finger scrolling (enabled by default). Nice, I thought to myself, until I tried to use it. It turned out that the responsiveness was really bad. The touchpad did not seem to properly detect when I used more than one finger. Sometimes I had to swipe my fingers ten times before the drivers detected this and initiated the scroll feature. Most of the time nothing happened, which you probably can tell is extremely annoying. In addition to this, when it actually did scroll, the mouse pointer would change into an ugly picture to indicate this, which I find totally useless and quite distracting.
(I have tested several computers with default drivers since I got my computer. Many of them already had multi touch functionality enable by default. My experience with these drivers are that the responsiveness varies between different computer models. I probably got one of worst available (a fully equipped and quite expensive Asus U36SD). But even on laptops that work much better than mine, my opinion is that the feeling still leaves much to be desired when compared to, for example, the silky smooth scrolling experience on Macs.)
Step 2: Switch to open source
While searching around for a solution to the problem of poor responsiveness I stumbled upon a blog post that had a comment, mentioning a little program named TwoFingerScroll. This program replaces some of the built in functionality of the drivers to give you better multi touch scrolling. The result is excellent responsiveness and feeling! It simply works as you’d expect it to!
Before installing TwoFingerScroll, I recommend turning off most features of the Synaptics drivers (but don’t uninstall the drivers as they are still required). First disable the build in two finger scroll as this will interfere with TwoFingerScroll’s implementation. You may also want to disable other features in the drivers, since most of them are more or less worthless if you ask me. I do like the momentum feature though, so my suggestion is to experiment until you find a solution that suits you!
Update: The original TwoFingerScroll has not been updated in 3 years, but thanks to being free software a brave new soul has taken upon himself to update the program and add new features! You can find these updates at the TabletPCReview forums.
Step 3: Enhance Windows
Multi touch scrolling does not seem to be natively supported by Windows. The implementations apparently work by emulating the scroll wheel function on the mouse. This kind of implementation (basically hacking the system) tends to open up for more or less good solutions. The most obvious problem I found is that the fact that the “control” currently having focus always receives the scroll wheel input. This means that if your mouse hover above a scrollable list or page of some kind, but this list is currently not selected, nothing will happen when you try to scroll, since the selected control in the currently active window is getting the input signals instead of what is underneath the mouse. This is how Windows works by design, but when using the touchpad I found that it become more obvious and forces a non-intuitive way to use the touchpad because you constantly have to precision-click to select the active control before you could scroll it.
The solution I found was to get a utility that automatically redirects the scroll wheel signals to the control located directly underneath the mouse pointer. There are several to choose from. I settled on one named KatMouse. Whether or not this is the best program I don’t know, but it works well enough for me.
Step 4: Configuration
Almost done! But to make the touchpad more intuitive to use it may be worthwhile to configure TwoFingerScroll a bit to handle right and middle mouse button clicks without having to use the physical buttons on the touchpad. I’ve configured it so that if I “tap” with two fingers simultaneously it corresponds to doing a right click. If I keep a finger on the plate and tap with a second finger, this is equivalent to clicking with the middle mouse button (usually button on the scroll wheel). There is a small problem with the mouse pointer jumping away when “middle clicking”, but I can accept this. There is a small problem with the mouse pointer jumping away when doing the middle click, but I can live with it since I feel this is the most natural way to use the touchpad I’ve found so far.
Summary
The bottom line is that using these utilities and settings, I now have a laptop that I can control using the touchpad in a way that I enjoy. It’s not perfect, but compared to the way it was when I first got the computer, it’s a minor revolution. I hope anyone reading this gets the same results. I find it fascinating that a large corporation like Synaptics is unable to make sensible drivers, instead requiring an open source program by a hobby developer to give Windows PCs some feeling!
Great info!!! You are god. I was several hours searching for something like this. It’s a shame I couldn’t install the elantech drivers that did the job so well
Thanks
Greetings.
Hah! What a coincidence. I just spent the last few hours bashing my head against the exact same problem of wanting the touch pad to flow like a Mac’s.
Strangely enough, I personally did the exact same steps of installing the newest Synaptic drivers, and also couldn’t believe how poor the two finger scrolling was implemented. Not content with that terrible excuse for software, I found TwoFingerScroll. It works amazingly! If you haven’t already, enable smooth scrolling for per pixel scrolling. It’s like a hot knife through butter.
I haven’t tried that other tool though. I haven’t yet experienced that other bug you mentioned. I might download the software just in case though. :D
Cheers for sharing.
When I’m trying to open TwoFingerScrolling file in folder, then it says: No Synaptics TouchPad devices foun… Why It perform like that ?
TwoFingerScroll only support touchpads manufactured by the company Synaptics. Your computer probably has a touchpad by another company?
Is says the same to mine by i have that toucjpad
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I get “Synaptics kernel driver registry keys missing. Reinstall drivers.”
I get this after each time I reinstalled the drivers, version 6.2 and version 15.2.20.
Any idea what I need to do to fix this? Thank you.
Try to install/run TwoFingerScroll as Admin (right click on the exe and select “run as admininistrator”)
Here’s something to thing to try if TwoFingerScroll does not want to start, giving an error message like: Class not registered, ClassID: {9C042297-D1CD-4F0D-B1AB-9F48AD6A6DFF}:
You might need to change the folder names if your Windows is not installed in “c:\windows”. This should also work on Windows 8.
Source
How do I find out, what to change the folder names into?
Hope u can help me :)
Press Win+R, type
%windir%and then enter. The This will open the Windows folder!I have this same problem but how do I fix it on Windows XP??
Nevermind.. I downloaded 64 bit for a 32 bit system… haha. problem solved and you will forever be remembered for your help!!! Thank you SOOOO MUCH :D
Yay! I was getting carpel tunnel from dragging scroll bars all over the place. I always thought about how insanely lame it is that the computer is fine but the scrolling is so awkward I want my old obsolete Mac back.
WOW. Thank you very much for the info. I was about to throw my touchpad away and change it by a wacom or similar.
Smooooth.
I did a system recovery on my toshiba R835 to the factory setting. but it lost the multiguesture after the recovery. when I tried to run the TwoFingerScroll, it says no adapter found. after re-scan, it still can not find any adapter. when I tried it the 3rd time. no response, the program dose not run at all. any help is appreciated.!
Have you installed drivers for the touchpad? If not, go to Synaptics and download their latest drivers:
http://www.synaptics.com/resources/drivers
Even if you have drivers installed, Toshiba might not provide the latest drivers for your computer, that’s why you should get the drivers directly from Synaptics.
Thanks a ton man ! The TwoFingerScroll guys have done an awesome job ! And so have you by providing this info :):)
Thank you soooo much for referring this app to us. I have been dreading to use the two finger scroll on my Envy 4 and it wasn’t working from day one. Now it works like a charm. All thanks to the guy who made the app and the idiots at Synapitcs who couldn’t.
Cheers!
Synaptic Two finger scrolling Toshiba P750.
Step (1) Open Mouse Setting.
(2) Click On Device Settings.
(3) Click On Settings.
(4) Double Click Scroll, there is the option.
That’s how i did it after hours searching forums that go on and on about nothing that has anything to do with what you are asking.
I tried the double click on Scrolling and up it popped.
If this doesn’t work for you then download the app as said above or maybe your Laptop
doesn’t support the function.
Thanks very much for this, got a new laptop (second hand) and it doesnt have two finger scrolling, Its a nightmare!! downloading drivers as we speak!
Hi, worked like a charm…
But suddenly my two finger scroll stopped working again today (a month or two later)
What could be the problem? Please help!
Impossible to say. Make sure that the program is still running and try to edit the settings to see if you can get it working?
My samsung laptop NP300E5C-A40IN , the two- finger scroll and gesture keys aren’t working. I tried all the above, the two-finger scroll also gives error message and the cmd.exe file says: the path is incorrect. Help …
I am running Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64 Bits. In my Device Manager > Mice and other pointing Devices, It shows Synaptics PS/2 Port compatible touchpad with Driver 15.3. I have even tried the latest update 17.0
In My Control Panel > Mouse, It shows standard PS/2 pointing device.
When I try to install Two Finger Scroll, It give me that ” Synaptics device not found “.
I have been using a mac for a long time but my company has given me a windows laptop.
Life is a misery without 2 finger scroll.
Thanks for the help. My touch-pad works great now.
wow thank you for sharing this information. this way help me to navigate my laptop