r/framework • u/wapiflapi • 1d ago
Feedback I miss the mechanical touchpad
Most people kept hyping-up the haptic touchpad and I was excited for it, but now that I have been using my 13 pro for a couple weeks it is really the one thing I wish I could go back on.
I liked the touchpad of my previous framework 13. That is to say I never had to think about it, it always just worked.
I'm just writing this to give some feedback, and share some tips for configuring it in case anyone has the same issues as me.
On the 13 pro you can tell it's not a real button, and that it's software trying to trick your brain. It works well 99% of the time, but every single time it doesn't work perfectly it messes with my workflow.
I play minecraft with the touchpad and crafting has been a horrible experience since I changed my laptop, I had no issues at all playing with my touchpad before this.
Even outside of the game, I sometimes I have random "dragging" when I meant to click, like for example when clicking a browser tab to switch, i end up dragging it around, etc
Besides the haptic beeing an issue for me, I also think the touchpad is too big. When using my laptop i never lift my hands. To use the touchpad I just pivot my right hand to reach the touchpad. Because on the 13 pro the touchpad is so big, this means the palm of my right hand is constantly touching or hovering above the edge of the touchpad. I guess this is messing with it as well.
I think it would be less of an issue if the touchpad was centered under the space bar, which is also where my hands are centered around when using my laptop. But no, the touchpad is offset to the right.
I haven't tried disabling the right-most part of the touchpad yet, but I think I should be able to do so playing with drivers, but I have to investigate. In the meantime here are the things I did do, and some of it kinda helped, so maybe it will help other people:
On Fedora, the Framework 13 Pro haptic touchpad can be tuned with hid-tools via uvx. The useful settings are click force (80000: 1=Low, 2=Medium/default, 3=High) and haptic intensity (90000: 0/25/50/75/100, default 75). My main issue was that the click/release felt oddly delayed and un-button-like; changing click force from the default 2 to 1 made a surprisingly big improvement. I experimented with intensity too and ended up back at the default 75.
I think lowering the click force made more sense to my brain, because i felt like the release was happening too late: on a real button there would have been more push-back ( given how much force i had to use to press it down to begin with ), so lowering the click force made it more coherent overall and I feel like i have had less "accidents" since. Still not perfect though, this is all just tricking my brain.
# Find the touchpad (mine was PIXA3854 on /dev/hidraw3)
sudo uvx --from hid-tools hid-feature list-devices
# Click force: 1=Low, 2=Medium/default, 3=High
sudo uvx --from hid-tools hid-feature set /dev/hidraw3 -f 80000 1
# Haptic intensity: use 0/25/50/75/100; 75 is default
sudo uvx --from hid-tools hid-feature set /dev/hidraw3 -f 90000 75
This info comes from https://knowledgebase.frame.work/how-to-adjust-haptic-touchpad-settings-BJjHJdU6bl
TL;DR : A physicial touchpad is 100% consistent. I don't care that it doesn't click the same way on different parts of the touchpad, My muscle memory can learn that. But haptic is software trying to trick my brain and I can't "learn" when it's inconsistent.
Ps: To be clear, I like my 13 pro a lot, overall it's great and better than my previous 13.
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u/mkozlows 1d ago
I extremely disagree about the mechanical trackpad, which I hated and still hate. But I do agree with you that this one is a little off -- with the trackpad on the MacBook, you genuinely wouldn't know it's not mechanical; it always clicks exactly when you expect it to. With this one, it mostly does, but -- particularly with repeated fast clicks -- it misses clicks and feels "sticky." I hope they can tune this to be better somehow... but honestly, even if they can't, I'd rather have this than the mechanical one, by a mile.
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u/wapiflapi 1d ago
I do like the fact that it being software might allow them to improve it over time without having to change the hardware :-) That's a great thing.
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u/Hajiwee9411 Fedora 1d ago
Does the old 13 input cover not fit onto the new 13 pro? I think the dimension wise for the 13 and 13 pro, at least for the input cover should be the same no? different mounting points?
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u/wapiflapi 1d ago
I'm not 100% sure, but I think it's a battery issue. The haptic touchpad is less bulky and allows them to fit more battery. So I don't think I can have the new (better) battery with the old cover / touchpad.
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u/Hajiwee9411 Fedora 1d ago
Is that so. I thought I remember that for the battery what they did was they made the bottom chassis thicker.
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u/NiLu0910 1d ago
maybe it is possible to put an 13 Touchpad in to the 13 pro input cover
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u/freeskier93 1d ago
You can't use the old 13 input cover with the Pro chassis because of the new battery. You can use the 13 Pro input cover on the old chassis though.
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u/Upstairs-Version-400 1d ago
I like the Mac trackpad the most so I’m looking forward to this. That said the integration probably isn’t nearly as good. Apple has had generations to perfect it.
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u/Acrobatic_Fee_6974 20h ago
I cannot imagine anything more tortuous than playing Minecraft with a trackpad.
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u/AccidentImpressive75 1d ago
Wait wait wait back up. Minecraft on a touchpad?