palm rejection
also: palm detection, palm suppression
A touchpad or touch-screen feature that ignores unintended touches from the palm or heel of your hand while typing or writing, preventing accidental cursor movement or input.
Palm rejection is a software or hardware mechanism that filters out touch input detected near the edges of a trackpad or touch display where your palm naturally rests. When you're typing on a laptop, your palm frequently touches the trackpad surface—palm rejection detects this contact and disables the cursor or input from that area temporarily.
On Linux systems, this is typically handled by the input driver (like libinput or Synaptics) which uses heuristics such as contact size, pressure, location, and timing to distinguish between intentional finger touches and accidental palm contact. For example, a palm usually creates a larger contact area than fingertips, so the driver can ignore touches exceeding a certain size threshold.
You can often configure palm rejection sensitivity in Linux through configuration files or graphical settings. Some touchpads also have hardware-level palm detection that works independently of the OS.