Detect touchpad vs mouse in Javascript

Question

Is there any way to detect if the client is using a touchpad vs. a mouse with Javascript?

Or at least to get some reasonable estimate of the number of users that use touchpads as opposed to mice?

Answer 1

This topic may be already solved, but the answer was there is no way to detect it. Well I needed to get a solution, it was very important. So I found a acceptable solution for this problem:

var scrolling = false;
var oldTime = 0;
var newTime = 0;
var isTouchPad;
var eventCount = 0;
var eventCountStart;

var mouseHandle = function (evt) {
    var isTouchPadDefined = isTouchPad || typeof isTouchPad !== "undefined";
    console.log(isTouchPadDefined);
    if (!isTouchPadDefined) {
        if (eventCount === 0) {
            eventCountStart = new Date().getTime();
        }

        eventCount++;

        if (new Date().getTime() - eventCountStart > 100) {
                if (eventCount > 10) {
                    isTouchPad = true;
                } else {
                    isTouchPad = false;
                }
            isTouchPadDefined = true;
        }
    }

    if (isTouchPadDefined) {
        // here you can do what you want
        // i just wanted the direction, for swiping, so i have to prevent
        // the multiple event calls to trigger multiple unwanted actions (trackpad)
        if (!evt) evt = event;
        var direction = (evt.detail<0 || evt.wheelDelta>0) ? 1 : -1;

        if (isTouchPad) {
            newTime = new Date().getTime();

            if (!scrolling && newTime-oldTime > 550 ) {
                scrolling = true;
                if (direction < 0) {
                    // swipe down
                } else {
                    // swipe up
                }
                setTimeout(function() {oldTime = new Date().getTime();scrolling = false}, 500);
            }
        } else {
            if (direction < 0) {
                // swipe down
            } else {
                // swipe up
            }
        }
    }
}

And registering the events:

document.addEventListener("mousewheel", mouseHandle, false);
document.addEventListener("DOMMouseScroll", mouseHandle, false);

It may need some optimization and is maybe less than perfect, but it works! At least it can detect a macbook trackpad. But due to the design i'd say it should work anywhere where the pad introduces a lot of event calls.

Here is how it works:

When the user first scrolls, it will detect and check that in 50ms not more than 5 events got triggered, which is pretty unusual for a normal mouse, but not for a trackpad.

Then there is the else part, which is not for importance for the detection, but rather a trick to call a function once like when a user swipes. Please come at me if I wasn't clear enough, it was very tricky to get this working, and is of course a less than ideal workaround.

Edit: I optimized the code now as much as I can. It detects the mouseroll on the second time and swipe on trackpad instantly. Removed also a lot of repeating and unnecessary code.

Edit 2 I changed the numbers for the time check and numbers of events called from 50 to 100 and 5 to 10 respectively. This should yield in a more accurate detection.

Answer 2

Compare e.wheelDeltaY and e.deltaY (or e.deltaMode in Firefox) to detect touchpad mouse device

function handler(e) {
    var isTouchPad = e.wheelDeltaY ? e.wheelDeltaY === -3 * e.deltaY : e.deltaMode === 0
    // your code
    document.body.textContent = isTouchPad ? "isTouchPad" : "isMouse"
}
document.addEventListener("mousewheel", handler, false);
document.addEventListener("DOMMouseScroll", handler, false);

Answer 3

The answer above by Lauri seems to work, but it took me a while to understand why it works. So here I'll provide a slightly more human readable version, along with a conceptual explanation. First, that same code written out in a human readable manner:

function detectTrackPad(e) {
  var isTrackpad = false;
  if (e.wheelDeltaY) {
    if (e.wheelDeltaY === (e.deltaY * -3)) {
      isTrackpad = true;
    }
  }
  else if (e.deltaMode === 0) {
    isTrackpad = true;
  }
  console.log(isTrackpad ? "Trackpad detected" : "Mousewheel detected");
}

document.addEventListener("mousewheel", detectTrackPad, false);
document.addEventListener("DOMMouseScroll", detectTrackPad, false);

This works because wheelDeltaY measures the physical distance that the actual hardware mouse wheel has travelled, while deltaY measures the amount of scrolling produced on screen. A conventional mouse typically has a much lower "scroll resolution" than a trackpad. That is to say, with a trackpad you can make a tiny motion and a get a tiny scroll on screen. A conventional mouse scrolls in chunkier, low resolution clicks. To complete a full rotation of the mouse wheel, it might make 10 clicks. There is no such thing as a half click or quarter click.

For a conventional mouse, a single wheel click is reported as 120 wheelDeltaY "units" and results in about ~100px worth of scrolling. The physical wheelDeltaY unit is a completely arbitrary number, it is not measuring inches or degrees or anything like that. The number 120 was selected simply because it has a lot of useful factors. The amount of scrolling on screen is represented by deltaY, and it varies significantly by browser. (Sidenote, deltaY is generally measured in "lines" not pixels, though it's complicated, see previous link).

Interacting with a trackpad is different in two ways. First of all, you can get wheelDeltaY values much smaller than 120, because very subtle finger gestures are detectable. Second, the wheelDeltaY is exactly 3x the deltaY value (at least in every browser I've managed to test). So, for instance, if you make a physical finger gesture equal to 12 click units, it will generally result in 4 pixels worth of scrolling. Lauri's code uses this second property (Y1 = Y2 * 3) to detect the existence of a trackpad, but you could probably also be successful simply by checking if abs(wheelDeltaY) equals 120

I haven't tested this, but I think it would also work:

function detectTrackPad(e) {
  var isTrackpad = false;
  if (e.wheelDeltaY) {
    if (Math.abs(e.wheelDeltaY) !== 120) {
      isTrackpad = true;
    }
  }
  else if (e.deltaMode === 0) {
    isTrackpad = true;
  }
  console.log(isTrackpad ? "Trackpad detected" : "Mousewheel detected");
}

document.addEventListener("mousewheel", detectTrackPad, false);
document.addEventListener("DOMMouseScroll", detectTrackPad, false);

Answer 4

In the general case, there is no way to do what you want. ActiveX might allow you to see and examine USB devices, but in the best case, even if that is somehow possible, that limits you to IE users. Beyond that, there is no way to know.

You might be able to discern patterns in how (or how often) a touchpad user moves the cursor versus how a mouse user might move the cursor. Differentiating between physical input devices in this way is an absurdly difficult prospect, and may be wholly impossible, so I include here it for completeness only.