If there's one area where Apple definitively outdoes Microsoft, it's in touchpad quality. Cupertino's solutions are far more precise and smooth, while within Windows, the touchpad is a glorified mouse. The Precision Touchpad specification has the potential to fix that and greatly improve the user experience, but OEMs are slow to implement it. A recent tutorial published on Reddit teaches us how to force a Precision Touchpad-compatible driver in Windows 10 and enable all its latent features.
Why Precision Touchpad Matters
The Precision Touchpad specification debuted with the release of Windows 8. Given the poor reception that operating system received, it's no surprise that its priority was much lower than expected. However, it's time to recognize that the traditional implementation of touchpads in Windows is no longer acceptable. Unfortunately, the problem remains the same: we depend on the good will of OEMs and a special planetary alignment to receive such support through official channels. Last December, Microsoft confirmed that it would make Precision Touchpad a requirement on new computers with Windows 10, but so far it has been an optional technology. The good news is that we can persuade many laptops to activate Precision Touchpad, provided their original drivers are based on Synaptics or Elan.
How to Install the Driver
The guide appeared on Reddit almost a month ago, and several sister sites have experimented with it, generally obtaining very good results. Here's how to do it.
- Download the driver (Synaptics or Elan) and extract its contents to a temporary folder.
- In the "Device Manager", locate your touchpad under "Mice and other pointing devices".
- Right-click it and select "Update driver".
- Choose "Browse my computer for driver software", then "Let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer".
- Click "Have Disk...", navigate to the temporary driver folder, and select the file "Autorun.inf" (yes, it's strange, but that's how it works).
- The list will update with an entry belonging to Synaptics or Elan. Confirm the installation and accept Windows' warning (essentially, you're forcing a driver). Once completed, the touchpad may stop working, but a restart will bring it back.
If you restart and find that the touchpad doesn't work, it's likely that its entry is marked yellow in the "Device Manager". What you need to do at that point is select "Update driver" again, but this time let Windows find it automatically. Another restart, and Precision Touchpad should appear activated. Reports indicate that the process works with computers from multiple brands, including HP, Razer, Acer, Asus, and Lenovo. However, there are no guarantees. Windows always hated the idea of forced drivers, and that hasn't changed...
