How Can I Disable the Touchscreen on a Chromebook?

Chromebooks come with touchscreen displays on many models today, making them intuitive and easy to use just like your smartphone. But there may be times when you want to temporarily disable the touchscreen, like to clean the display or prevent accidental touches while typing.

Unlike Windows or Mac laptops, Chromebooks currently don't have a simple toggle switch to turn the touchscreen on or off. However, with a handy Chrome flag, you can disable or re-enable the touchscreen anytime using a convenient keyboard shortcut.

In this guide, let's see how to quickly turn off the touchscreen on your Chromebook when required.

Why Disable the Touchscreen on a Chromebook

Here are some common reasons you may want to disable the touchscreen:

• Avoid accidental touches while typing or using trackpad

• Clean the Chromebook screen without causing touches

• Turn off touch when using pen/stylus for drawing or writing

• Prevent children from smudging or improperly using the touchscreen

• Temporarily toggle touchscreen when not needed to save battery

• Disable faulty touchscreen if it registers false inputs

Luckily, it just takes a few simple steps to toggle the touchscreen on demand.

Enable Touchscreen Debug Flag in Chrome

To be able to turn off the touchscreen via keyboard, you first need to flip an experimental flag in the Chrome browser.

Follow these steps:

1. Launch Chrome on your Chromebook.

2. Type chrome://flags in the address bar and press Enter. This opens Flags page.

3. In the search box, type "ash debug" and press Enter.

4. Find the flag #ash-debug-shortcuts and set it to Enabled using the dropdown.

5. Restart Chrome and your Chromebook for the change to fully take effect.

This enables the keyboard shortcut to toggle the touchscreen.

Use Keyboard Shortcut to Turn Touchscreen On/Off

Once you have enabled the flag, use this simple shortcut to disable or enable the touchscreen anytime:

Search + Shift + T

The Search key is the key with magnifying glass icon, usually replacing Caps Lock. Press it along with Shift and T keys together.

When you use this shortcut for the first time, it will disable the touchscreen. The screen will display the message "Touchscreen disabled" briefly.

To enable back, simply use the Search + Shift + T shortcut again. You'll see the confirmation "Touchscreen enabled" on screen.

That's it! In just two steps, you can now quickly turn off the touchscreen. The toggle persists across Chromebook restarts.

Turn On Touch Automatically After Time Limit

Optionally, you can set the touchscreen to automatically turn back on after a chosen time limit:

1. Open chrome://flags and find #touchscreen-timeout-ms flag.

2. Set the flag value in milliseconds for when touch should re-enable automatically.

For instance, to bring touch back after 30 minutes, set flag to 1800000.

Now touch will toggle off with the keyboard shortcut, and turn back on automatically as per the time limit you specified.

Tips for Using Touchscreen Shortcut

• Use shortcut cautiously if others use your Chromebook, so you don't inadvertently disable their touchscreen.

• If touch is unresponsive, make sure it didn't get disabled accidentally using the shortcut.

• You can still use a touchscreen stylus pen while touch is disabled.

• On tablets like Pixel Slate, you may need to attach keyboard to use the shortcut.

• Check Chromebook manual if the Search key is in a non-standard location.

Conclusion

Being able to quickly disable the touchscreen on your Chromebook is handy in many situations. The experimental Chrome flag unlocks this useful functionality to toggle touch on and off using the Search + Shift + T shortcut.

Just be mindful of accidentally leaving touch disabled if you share your device with others. When not needed, disabling touch can also help conserve battery life.

Overall, this simple shortcut gives you better control over one of your Chromebook's most intuitive features. Use it wisely as per your needs for a more optimized touchscreen experience!