tap-to-click
also: tap click, software tap, touch tap
A touchpad feature that registers a tap (light touch without pressing down) as a mouse click, eliminating the need to physically press the touchpad button.
Tap-to-click enables your touchpad to detect when you lightly tap its surface and interpret that as a mouse click, rather than requiring you to press down firmly on a dedicated physical button. This makes touchpad interaction faster and more natural, especially for laptop users.
The feature is typically enabled by default on modern Linux laptops and is configured through your desktop environment's input settings (like GNOME Settings or KDE System Settings) or via command-line tools like xinput or synclient for Synaptics touchpads. You can usually control related settings such as tap-and-drag, two-finger tap (right-click), and tap sensitivity.
Example: enabling tap-to-click on a Synaptics touchpad using synclient TapButton1=1 allows single taps to register as left clicks without pressing the physical button.