Assign 3 finger tap to middle click on OMEN laptop 15 2018 (Windows 10)

[hireegy]

Hello,

After a full afternoon of trying (and having to retype part of this very message because of loading one too many pages from browsing history over the current page - I am getting tired), I have finally found a - clumsy, but working - way, to do the following:

- when doing a 3 finger tap on the laptop touchpad, to have the system do a middle mouse button click

- have this working on the OMEN laptop 15 dc0025nf (and precisely this one, with its Synaptics touchpad)

The fix requires using regedit and autohotkey; one to exfiltrate the 3 finger tap event, the other one to reach the software mouse buttons from that tap.

Disclaimer: although this fix works, it is still pretty messed up, so use at your own risk until it is officially validated as harmless by the HP staff.

If someone comes up with a better fix or can guarantee that it does not break anything, please come forward and share your thoughts too!

Here is how I did it:

1) First, you have to follow the procedure here: https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/20/16175682/enable-precision-drivers-on-synaptics-touchpads

WARNING: have a USB mouse ready, as this will temporarily disable the touchpad completely (my guess is it is not compatible with the precision driver at the hardware level)

2) Then, go to device manager, and update the touchpad driver online automatically.

3) What this does: when you update at step 2, it will put back the Synaptics driver, but some of the regedit infrastructure introduced by step 1 will still work, and you'll need it.

4) launch regedit.exe

5) go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Synaptics\SynTP\TouchPadSMB2cTM3384-1 <= this last key can be different on your system. (more info here, although for the OMEN 15 dc0025nf, that page does not work in my case: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Software-and-How-To-Questions/Three-Finger-touchpad-click-as-...)

Note that you might have two "TouchPad" subfolders at this time, one with "PS2" and the other with "SMB" in their names. Focus only on the SMB one, I did not find any use to the other one.

6) Normally, you should have a "3FingerTapPluginActionID" Dword key with a value 0x61 (hex), or 97 (decimal), and a "3FingerTapPluginID" set to "SynTP".

7) Now go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Synaptics\SynTPPlugIns\SynTP. You'll see there a bunch of folders, all indexed by a 2-digit number. Go to the folder named "97". You'll see that "Short name" contains the value "Launch Cortana". Since, if you're here, then like me, you won't be needing it anymore (I removed Cortana completely), we will now tweak another Dword there, "KeySequence"

😎 In the folder of step 7, modify "KeySequence" form its initial value (0x30005b53, or Windows+S) to the value 0x30001177 (which corresponds to Ctrl+F8, but you can build your own shortcut in the next step). All values are hexadecimal here.

9) The syntax of this keysequence is like this:

(xyaabbcc) where aa is the code of the first key if 3 key-combination (or 00 if 2 keys or less), bb the code of the second key (or 00 if 1 key), cc is the code of the last key, and then x is 3 for 2 keys or more (0 otherwise) and y is 3 for 3 keys or more.

You can find all keycodes here: http://www.hotkeynet.com/ref/keynames.html

10) If you look at the table in step 9, you'll see it has keys for "MButton". This is where I'm a little mad at Synaptics and HP for giving us such a crappy touchpad on such a high end machine: if you assign the MButton code (4) in the Keysequence dword, it won't work...as if this keysequence can reach the keyboard, but not the mouse buttons. It all seems like Synaptics has done a workaround to "kind of enable" 3 finger tap, without really enabling it the way Windows 10 would want it.

Therefore, please report if assigning "4" in keysequence works in your case, as in my case it did not work.

11) Once you've chosen your shortcut (try not to step on other programs' inner workings, here is a sample: https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000306.htm), input it inside the Keysequence Dword, and then apply.

12) Run the following line in a powershell window that you'll open with right click - run as admin:

Stop-Service "SyntpEnhService"; kill -name SynTPEnh; kill -name SynTPHelper; Start-Service "SynTPEnhService"

 (see this post for details: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31796611/synaptics-custom-gestures-for-windows-using-registry)

This will reset the touchpad while taking into account the registry modifications you just did, and without rebooting or even logging out.

Now, every time you'll do a 3 finger tap, the system will press "CTRL+F8" on your keyboard. But that doesn't lead us very far yet, right? So here is the next step:

13) Google and download Autohotkey. Install it and open help to see how to do your first script and get a hand of it

14) Open a new script inside a folder in your SSD drive (the OMEN 15 has one), and paste this in:

LControl & F8::MButton
return

Or a different combination depending on your shortcut, see here: https://autohotkey.com/docs/KeyList.htm.

Then save and exit

15) Double click the script you just created. This should launch it; you'll see an icon in your tray

16) Open a firefox window and try a 3-finger tap on a link...

If all goes well, it should open in a new tab!!! 😄

17) You can set the script to execute everytime the computer starts, see here: https://www.maketecheasier.com/schedule-autohotkey-startup-windows/

A few troubleshooting tips:

A) To check the regedit step: try to replace the keysequence by another keysequence from a different plugin ID, e.g. 90 or 98 instead of the 97: 33111209 for ctrl+alt+tab for example. That way, you'll see your triple finger tap change behavior.

B) Note that the "3FingerTapAction" and "3FingerPressButtonAction" Keys did not have any effect in my case. Setting them to 4 did nothing, even if removing the references to the SynTP plugins, as if they were ignored, probably because of the messed up setup of the regedit infrastructure from the 2-driver install and update process. I assume that's because there is no such "action" registering in the system as a 3 finger tap, ever, and that the SynTP plugins are just a workaround to make something work with it.

C) You can also try a keysequence like 41 (in hexadecimal) that will output the letter "a" when you do a 3 finger tap. You can test that a few times in the notepad, to make sure your keysequence goes through.

D) FInally, you can do the following: in your Autohotkey script, you can go to the tray icon, right click, click "open", it will display a gray window, go to View > Key history and script info. Then you'll see whether CTRL+F8 passes through to Autohotkey or not. If not, check that 3FingerTapPluginActionID is still at 97 (decimal), otherwise your 3 finger tap won't reach your modified plugin.

That's it...tell me if this works for you or not!

Now for new buyers: you'll now how deep of a fix it requires to have this most basic functionnality of the middle mouse click (not even click+drag) on the Omen 15. Shop wisely!

For HP: please stop shipping unfinished products just because the low end touchpad does not appear on spec sheets. Gaming laptops are also used for browsing, and they're laptops, you can't count on an external mouse in all situations, otherwise take a desktop PC. Both for firefox and opening second instances of pinned apps, the middle mouse click is a life saver. We users need it, so please stop making it so messy to have that function back!!

PS: HP and Synaptics, you owe me an afternoon of work

[kristen_maxwell]

Bless you, sir or madam. I just got an HP Spectre x360 15, and had the exact same problem. years of using a different laptop taught me a bunch of muscle memory to use a 3-finger tap as middle mouse button. I was INCENSED that HP/Synaptics saw fit to force more Cortana on me, instead of allowing me the simple measure of customizing how I want to use the computer I paid for. (conspiracy theory: Microsoft is likely paying a handsome fee to have OEMs push their data-collection services on us and NOT provide us with an option to use our hardware for functions that we actually want, or that make us more productive).

Anyway, ranting aside, your solution is the ONLY one that worked for me. Fortunately, I was already an AHK junkie, so my only difficulty was in dealing with the arcane VKEY sequencing in the registry, which i would have NEVER been able to accomplish without your thoughtful and detailed guide. So there you have it-- you've single-handedly provided better customer service than the multi-million-dollar corporation that actually makes this stuff. This shouldn't be necessary, if market competition was functioning correctly, but in this imperfect world, thank you SO MUCH for being so excessively useful. If you're ever in central Texas, I'll buy you a [beverage]!

kris in austin

P.S.

I actually registered just to say thank you, and if you knew how slovenly I am, you'd realize how big of a compliment that is to you 🙂