While the Windows 8/8.1 was designed for touchscreen, the latest Windows 10 is optimized for touch screen input and works equally well with traditional input methods such as mouse and keyboard. The lock screen, Start, and Settings have especially been designed for touchscreen.
The new tablet mode in Windows 10 makes it easy to use on a device that supports touch input. When the tablet mode is activated, full-screen Start appears, icons are nicely placed on the File Explorer, and icons on the taskbar are also nicely placed for easy touch input.
Disabling touch screen in Windows
Now, if you’re running Windows 10/8.1 on a touch device, you might want to temporarily disable the touch input (touch screen) so that you can use it as a laptop by connecting a pair of keyboard and mice to your device. As you have discovered by now, Windows 10/8.1 doesn’t include an option to disable the touch input or touch screen, and surprisingly, there is not even a single third-party tool to for this job.
Windows 8 Developer Preview, the first preview release of Windows 8 (which was released almost three years ago), did offer an option to disable the touch screen or touch input. In the Developer Preview, we could navigate to Pen and Touch settings located in the Control Panel to quickly disable the touch input or touch screen. For some reasons, Microsoft removed this option from Release Preview and RTM builds, making it difficult to disable the touch input in the tiled operating system. Likewise, there is no such option in Windows 10 to turn off the touch screen.
If, for some reason, you want to disable the touch input in Windows 10/8.1, you can use the following workaround.
Warning: Once the touch input is disabled, you will need to use a pair of mice and keyboard to get your work done. Don’t attempt this method if you don’t have a keyboard or mice with you right now, as you need them in order to enable touch input.
Disabling touch input in Windows 10/8.1
Step 1: Open Device Manager. To do this, type Device Manager in Start search, and then click/tap Device Manager entry to launch the same.
Alternatively, you can right-click (touch and hold) on the Start button to open the power user menu and then click or tap Device Manager to open the same.
Step 2: In the Device Manager window, expand Tab, and then expand Human Interface Devices.
Step 3: Right-click on the second entry titled HID-complaint device, click Disable and then click Yes button when you see a warning message saying that “Disabling this device will cause it to stop functioning. Do you really want to disable it?” to disable the touch screen or touch input. That’s it!
If your touch screen is still working fine as it was before, right-click on all other HID-complaint device entries one after another and disable them as well.
To enable the touch input again
Step 1: Open Device Manager by following the steps mentioned above.
Step 2: Expand Tab, expand Human Interface Devices. Enable HID-complaint device one after another and enable them.
These instructions work great on both Windows 10 as well as Windows 8.1. Good luck!
