synclient command not found

In this troubleshooting guide we learn how to fix synclient command not found error message

Introduction

When you run more command in linux terminal / console, you get the following error message

synclient: command not found

or when using sudo you get the following error message

sudo: synclient: command not found

In Ubuntu synclient is provided by xserver-xorg-input-synaptics package.

xserver-xorg-input-synaptics is:

This package provides an input driver for the X.Org X server to enable advanced features of the Synaptics Touchpad including:

Movement with adjustable, non-linear acceleration and speed
Button events through short touching of the touchpad
Double-Button events through double short touching of the touchpad
Dragging through short touching and holding down the finger on the touchpad
Middle and right button events on the upper and lower corner of the touchpad
Vertical scrolling (button four and five events) through moving the finger on the right side of the touchpad
The up/down button sends button four/five events
Horizontal scrolling (button six and seven events) through moving the finger on the lower side of the touchpad
The multi-buttons send button four/five events, and six/seven events for horizontal scrolling
Adjustable finger detection
Multifinger taps: two finger for middle button and three finger for right button events. (Needs hardware support. Not all models implement this feature.)
Run-time configuration using shared memory. This means you can change parameter settings without restarting the X server (see synclient(1)).
It also provides a daemon to disable touchpad while typing at the keyboard and thus avoid unwanted mouse movements (see syndaemon(1)).

To fix this problem, we can install more using the command below.

sudo apt-get -y install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

This command might take some time to finish depending on your machine internet connection.

You can also use apt command to install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics.

sudo apt -y install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

Or if you have aptitude installed you can use the following command.

sudo aptitude install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

In this tutorial we learn how to fix synclient command not found error in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux or Raspbian distribution.