How To Disable Laptop Keyboard: Windows, Mac, Linux, Ubuntu

How To Disable Laptop Keyboard: Disabling a laptop keyboard is not a difficult thing. A laptop keyboard is required for disabling for many reasons.

Like your keyboard, few reasons are not working fine, and you want to replace it with an external keyboard. The second reason is that you want to clean your keyboard.

Whatever the reason but the actual point is that how to disable the laptop keyboard?

Most laptops get an in-build capacity to incapacitate touchpad when an external mouse is connected. But there is no key to disable the laptop keyboard.

However, for any reason, it’s a fraction harder to disable the laptop keyboard.

The laptop and desktop computer serves the same purpose, but they are different.

A desktop requires its primary requirements like a mouse, keyboard, and monitor, whereas, on the laptop, you get all things in one place.

The easiest way is to connect an external keyboard and stop using a laptop dedicated keypad.

However, if we need to disable the laptop’s keyboard temporarily, we have compiled a brief list below.

In this article, we will drop several ways on how to disable a laptop keyboard. We have gathered several possible methods for Windows and also for Macintosh, Ubuntu and Linux.

How To Disable Laptop Keyboard: Temporarily And Permanently

This section will walk you through the step-by-step process of disabling the laptop keyboard temporarily and permanently.

Temporarily

How to disable laptop keyboard: Let’s make this clear to give you a decent idea of how to disable a laptop keyboard. We’re moving to uninstall keyboard drivers that will disable the keyboard till you restart your PC.

As most of the Windows operating systems have a characteristic to install drivers automatically, Windows will automatically establish default drivers when you restart your laptop.

1. First, open Device Manager. There are several ways to open the device manager but a simple one to 

• Right-click on the start button and select device manager.  
• Or you can press Windows+S to open the search box and type device, and select device manager.
• And last you can jump to Run Dialog Box and type devmgmt.msc

2. After the device manager gets opened now to navigate to the drop-down menu Keyboard and select the internal keyboard, click disable; if you don’t get any disable option, go for uninstall.

Some dialogues will guarantee if you want to uninstall the driver or not accept completing the task.

Note:

Do not restart your laptop; restarting your computer will bring back the laptop keyboard to its working condition.

Permanently

How to disable laptop keyboard: In this, we will perform a few more steps before applying the above-described steps. For this, we will use the Group Policy Editor.

• Open Run Dialog Box and type gpedit.msc to go to a local group policy editor. 
• On the left panel, go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Device Installation; you will find Device Installation Restriction click that to expand. 
• Now on the right panel, you will see many policies that permit Windows to work correctly. Slide down to the policy: Prevent Installation of Devices not described by other policy settings.
• Click policy settings or right-click to modify it. And finally, enable the policy.

After that, you can perform the above-described steps to disable the keyboard, but this time your laptop keyboard will permanently be disabled; Windows will not reinstall drivers automatically when you restart your laptop. 

Disable Using Third Party Applications

You can disable the laptop keyboard by using third-party applications, and you don’t require to perform all the above tasks if it fills difficult for you.

For disabling the keyboard on the Windows operating system, many applications are available. We have included applications that will undermine both the keypad and trackpad.

One of the reputed applications is KeyFreeze it is prevalent. When it appears to disable the laptop keyboard, it consists of a simple installation method, and with fewer clicks, it can disable your keyboard and trackpad at the same time.

And that is the principal disadvantage of this software because you cannot just disable one device at once. With fewer clicks, it will incapacitate both the devices.

A significant characteristic that makes it winning is you can enable both of them by pushing Ctrl + Alt + Del keys while both of the devices are disabled.

Another way is to use device manager software available on CNET, and these are entirely similar to the Windows in-built device manager, but they provide more flexibility.

You can disable the laptop keyboard with fewer clicks without performing all the above steps.

For Ubuntu Laptops

Disabling the Ubuntu laptop keyboard is not a difficult task simple solution is to run a command at the startup.

But this process is only for the user, and they can perform after they logged in. And if for any reason you want to take action before logging in, then you have to run the init.d script. For more information, click here. 

Now let’s see what you have to do:

• You can complete the job or try by adding the command at the end of the /home/user/.bashrc file. 
• Also, you can try to add the command in the system>Preferences>Startup Applications. This will only work well for Ubuntu and not for anything like Kubuntu or Xubuntu, etc.

For Apple’s MacBook

One of the best laptops in the market is Apple’s MacBook. MacBook’s are available at a high price but delivers outstanding performance.

And if you come to the requirement of disabling MacBook’s internal keyboard, it is a tricky job. But there is a simple way to complete this task using terminals commands.

If you don’t want all these technical procedures, you can use external software to disable the MacBook keyboard.

Using Terminal:

The terminal is just like CMD in Windows. By accessing the terminal, you can control the macOS ecosystem in developer mode.

You can disable the MacBook keyboard just by pasting the following commands in the Terminal interface.

The command for disabling:

sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleUSBTopCase.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleUSBTCKeyboard.kext/

Enter the command when it ask for the password and it will disable the keyboard.

The command for enabling:

sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleUSBTopCase.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleUSBTCKeyboard.kext

For Linux Laptop

For this, we didn’t put down any lengthy paragraph, but we had selected a video of a tech specialist.

This tech blogger had explained it very nicely, and it is elementary to understand. So, we recommend you to see the full video if you are searching for this.

Conclusion

How to disable laptop Keyboard: So, these are our few recommended ways to disable the laptop keyboard.

At the same time, there are many more that you can try, but for windows, we think it is best to go with Device Manager because it is safe and secure.

We also like to recommend not going for a permanent disabling system as you have to operate advanced settings where mistakes can crash your laptop. 

We also recommended some third party application which can perform the task very smoothly. But still, we like the Device Manager process.

Hence, we are very interested in knowing which process you like the most and how you completed your job. 

So, please feel free to know your thoughts in the comment section below. 

Have a nice day!