Disabling Touchscreen in Windows 8.1

If you happen to have a convertible notebook that features a digitalizer pen input such as the Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga you will find out that it can be rather annoying to write with these things using the pen. The touchscreen that works without the pen (finger touch input) is disabled as soon as the tip of the digitalizer pen is within a certain distance of the screen. Then you can comfortably rest your hand on the screen and write normally like you would on paper. However, if you happen to touch some portions of the screen with your palm before the pen comes within range your pen will not be recognized and you’ll write garbage in your document.

Fixing the problem

To prevent this Windows 7 allowed to disable the finger touch input while still keeping the digitalizer input working. Sadly Windows 8.1 does no longer provide this handy feature. However, this can be fixed by a very simple modification in the registry.

Open the registry editor by typing regedit in the Run window that you can open by pressing Windows+R. Next, navigate to the following location:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Wisp\Touch\

In this directory, create a new DWORD (using the context menu) and name it TouchGate. Make sure that the keys value is set to 0.

After rebooting your machine the finger touch input will be disabled but the digitalizer pen input will still work a treat.

Disclaimer

I am not responsible for any damage caused by following this guide.