How to turn off touch screen on Chromebook

Disable the touch screen on your Chromebook in seconds.
By Kimberly Gedeon  on 
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A visual description of disabling touch screen on a Chromebook
How to turn off touch screen on a Chromebook Credit: Mashable/Getty Images /Issarawat Tattong/jayk7

Yes, there is a way to turn off the touch screen on your Chromebook. However, as of this writing, it's an experimental feature.

To access it, you'll need to navigate to chrome://flags in the Chrome browser. Don't worry; we'll give you a detailed, step-by-step guide on how to disable your Chromebook's touch screen in no time.

How to turn off touch screen on Chromebook

Total Time
  • 2 minutes
What You Need
  • A touchscreen Chromebook

Step 1: Open the Chrome browser.

Type in "chrome://flags."

chrome://flags in Chrome browser
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

Step 2: Search for the word 'keyboard' in the Experiments window.

Find "Debugging keyboard shortcuts" and select "Enable" in the drop-down menu.

Enabled dropdown next to 'Debugging keyboard shortcuts'
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

Step 3: Click on 'Restart.'

Wait for your Chromebook to reboot.

Restart button on Chromebook
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

Step 4: Turn off touch screen with Shift + Search + 'T' combo

On some keyboards, the Search key is a white dot. On others, it's a magnifying glass. Now, if you try to touch your Chromebook's screen, it should be unresponsive.

Disable touchscreen on Chromebook keyboard shortcut
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

Note: We used the Acer Chromebook Spin 514 for this how-to.

Topics How-To

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Kimberly Gedeon
East Coast Tech Editor

Kimberly Gedeon is a tech explorer who enjoys doing deep dives into the most popular gadgets, from the latest iPhones to the most immersive VR headsets. She's drawn to strange, avant-garde, bizarre tech, whether it's a 3D laptop, a gaming rig that can transform into a briefcase, or smart glasses that can capture video. Her journalism career kicked off about a decade ago at MadameNoire where she covered tech and business before landing as a tech editor at Laptop Mag in 2020.


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