Touchscreens have recently reached mass-market appeal in laptops and desktops. However, while Being able to interact directly with your screen can be extremely useful at times, it can also cause accidental clicks or other issues.
As a result, if you have an HP, Dell, or Lenovo touchscreen computer, you’ll probably want to enable or disable it at various times. Unfortunately, however, many Windows 10 touch screen laptops don’t make this easy. There’s no Windows 10 touchscreen settings menu, meaning the exact process can vary depending on the manufacturer. To make things even more difficult, some OEMs don’t provide a straightforward way to turn it off.
Thankfully, through some tweaks, you can turn off the touch screen no matter your device. Today we’re going to show you how to disable a touchscreen on Windows 10. We’ll also show you to enable it if you wish, which may help if your HP laptop touch screen is not working, the touch screen is not working on your Lenovo laptop, or you’re having problems with any other brand. Let’s get started.
How to Enable or Disable a Touchscreen on Windows 10 via the Registry Editor
Though the registry editor can be dangerous if you don’t use it correctly, you’ll be just fine if you read our safe editing guide first. The bottom line is that this is a nice and quick way to disable or enable a touchscreen in Windows 10.
- Open the Registry Editor
Press the Windows button to open the Start menu, then type “Registry Editor”. Click the top result. - Find and change the TouchGate registry key
In your Registry Editor search bar, paste the following:Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Wisp\Touch
If that doesn’t work, navigate using the folder menu in the sidebar. Once you’re in the right place, double-click the “TouchGate” DWORD in the main pane and change its “Value data” to “0” When you’re done, click OK and restart your computer.
If you don’t see the TouchGate DWORD, right-click in the main pane to create a new DWORD (32-bit) and name it TouchGate. Then, follow the steps above.
How to Turn on/Turn off a Touch Screen in Device Manager
If the registry is a bit too intimidating for you, Device Manager is your friend. It will give you a nice, readable interface from which you can easily enable or disable your touch screen in Windows 10.
- Open Device Manager
Press start and type “Device Manager”, then click the top result. - Disable the touch screen
Scroll down the “Human Interface Devices” section of Device Manager and click it to open the full list. Find the device named “HID-compliant touch screen”, right-click it, and select “Disable device”. - Accept the touchscreen disable prompt
Device Manager will surface a warning dialog that says “Disabling this device will cause it to stop functioning. Do you really want to disable it?”. In our case, that’s exactly what we want, so click “Yes”. - Enable your touchscreen in Windows 10 Device Manager
To enable it again, find the “Human Interface Devices” section in Device Manager, scroll until you see “HID-compliant touch screen”, right-click it, and select “Enable device”.
If your touch screen is not working on your HP or Lenovo laptop, it may have been automatically disabled in Device Manager. This can happen if it runs into a driver issue, for example, or there’s a resource conflict.
How to Enable a Touchscreen in Windows 10
If your touch screen won’t stay enabled via the above method, you may need to turn it on via the Device Manager properties menu instead. This will give you a wizard to follow.
- Open Device Manager
Press Start and type “Device Manager”. Click the top result to open it. - Press ‘Enable Device’ in the properties menu
Find the “Human Interface Devices” section in Device Manager and press the arrow to expand its list. Double-click “HID-compliant touch screen” to open its properties, then press “Enable Device” at the bottom of the “General” tab. - Press ‘Next >’ in the troubleshooting wizard
- Click ‘Finish’
- Close the device properties
How to Turn off a Touchscreen in Windows 10 with PowerShell
If you prefer the command-line or you’re on a GUI-less server install, you can use PowerShell to modify your Windows 10 touchscreen settings.
- Open PowerShell as an administrator
Press “Windows + X” to open the advanced Start menu, then click “Windows PowerShell (Admin)”. It’s important that you start it as an admin or Windows may not have the permissions to make this change. - Run the touchscreen disable commands
Paste the following command into your PowerShell window by right-clicking or enabling copy/paste shortcuts:Get-PnpDevice | Where-Object {$_.FriendlyName -like '*touch screen*'} | Disable-PnpDevice -Confirm:$false
If you need to enable it again, you can just switch out “Disable” for “Enable”:
Get-PnpDevice | Where-Object {$_.FriendlyName -like '*touch screen*'} | Enable-PnpDevice -Confirm:$false
With hope, this tutorial helped resolve your issue if your touchscreen is not working. If it didn’t, leave a comment, otherwise, consider moving on to our tutorial to enable the touch-friendly File Explorer.