Does the charm bar drive you crazy?

Are you using Windows 8?  Does the Charm Bar on the right side of the screen drive you crazy?
Did you know you can turn that annoying thing off?  
Check out this post to shut it down!

One of the most annoying features of Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 are the touch gestures for touchpads. These gestures open menus such as the Charms Bar, App Switcher, and App Bar. In the Desktop view these gestures aren't very useful and are triggered accidentally when you use your touchpad. Even if you disabled on-screen mouse pointer gestures, which are triggered from hot corners, these annoying gestures remain enabled and popup at the most inopportune times. Let me show you how to disable them.

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Microsoft has worked with various touchpad manufacturers to enable these "features" in the drivers for these touchpads, and there are multiple edge swipe gestures:

• Swiping in from the left edge of the touchpad towards the center shows the app switcher or switches to the most recently used Metro app
• Swiping in from the right edge of the touchpad towards the center shows the Charms Bar
• Swiping down from the top edge of the touchpad towards the center shows the App Bar (only when you are in a Metro app)

These third party touchpad drivers often integrate with your Mouse Control Panel, so that is where you must go to disable them. Open the Mouse Properties by clicking the Windows icon in the task bar in the lower left corner of your screen.  Then type "Mouse Properties" and click on "Change Mouse Settings".  There are multiple touchpad manufacturers and each has its own settings interface to control these and for Asus and Dell you get to these settings in a different way which is outlined in their specific sections.  Scroll down to see the steps for each manufacturer.

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Synaptics Touchpad

1. Click the Device Settings tab in the Mouse Control Panel.
   
2. Click on the Settings button.
   
3. Uncheck the option 'Enable Edge Swipes' and click OK.
   

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Lenovo UltraNav touchpad

1. Click the UltraNav tab in the Mouse Control Panel.
2. Under the TouchPad section, click the Settings button.
3. Expand the Application Gestures section and click on Edge Swipes.
4. Uncheck 'Enable Edge Swipes'.

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Alps Touchpad

1. Click the EdgeAction (TM) tab in the Mouse Control Panel.
2. Uncheck the gestures you don't want (Left/Right/Top/Top Left EdgeAction), and then click OK.

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Elan Touchpad

1. Click the ELAN tab in the Mouse Control Panel.
2. Click the Enable Device button if that button is disabled, then click Options.
3. Click Edge Swipe and disable them.

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Logitech Touchpad

1. Open Logitech SetPoint Settings.
2. Click the section called Navigate Windows (with the icon of the black pointing hand)
3. Uncheck any options you want. Only Switch applications, Show Charms and Show Windows 8 App Bar are 1-finger gestures, the rest are multi-touch so you are unlikely to trigger them accidentally. Click OK.

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Dell Touchpad

1. Open the Mouse Control Panel and you will see the Dell Touchpad tab.
2. Click the link called 'Click to change Dell Touchpad settings'.
3. Another window will open. Click the Gestures section there.
4. You can turn off the gestures you don't want individually or turn off gestures completely. Then click the Save button and close the window.

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ASUS Smart Gesture Touchpad

1. In the notification area (system tray), click the icon for ASUS Smart Gesture touchpad. The icon may be hidden in the overflow area of the tray, in that case, click the tiny arrow and then click the icon.
2. Click the Edge Gesture tab.
3. Uncheck any options you don't want: Toggle Charm Bar (right edge), Toggle Menu Bar (top edge) and Switch Running Applications (left edge). Then click OK.

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Often various hardware OEMs (Lenovo, Samsung, HP) rebrand these touchpad driver settings in the Mouse Control Panel so the exact name of the tab may be different. For example, if you have OEM drivers for the touchpad installed, then the tab may be named differently. But the settings UI should be very similar and it should be easy enough for you to figure where to disable these swipe gestures. The touchpad settings will generally be in either the Mouse Control Panel or in the taskbar notification (tray) area.

Finally, if you have a relatively new PC with a modern Precision Touchpad designed to work with Windows 8.1, then you can disable these gestures right from PC Settings.

1. Press the Win + I keys together on your keyboard and click Change PC Settings in the lower right corner. Go to PC and devices -> Mouse and touchpad.
2. If you have a precision touchpad, then there will be options to disable those edges swipes/gestures there.
3. Turn off the option "Enable swiping in from the left or right edge".

You did it!  Now those touch gestures won't pop up everytime you swipe your fingers (either intentionally or accidentally) across the touchpad.
Your touchpad will work like a charm...without the charm!