How to Disable the Touchscreen in Windows 11

Sick of sticky fingers poking at your monitor? Here's how to disable the touchscreen in Windows 11.

Using a touchscreen PC is exciting, for the first couple of days at least. And when you put Windows 11's new look and feel in the mix, and you've got a perfect recipe for some jolly good time with your computer. Heck, you might just end up spending a few minutes exploring the new Settings app.

But as days pass, you notice your sleek screen is starting to get greasy and has a gazillion fingerprints. As such, it's high time you learned how to disable the touchscreen in Windows 11 to prevent any further greasy fingerprints from smudging your screen.

How to Disable the Touchscreen via the Device Manager

The quickest way to disable touchscreen on Windows 11 is from within the Device Manager. Start by pressing Win + R, typing devmgmt.msc, and pressing Enter. This will launch the Device Manager.

Next, look for Human Interface Devices in the list of devices. Click on the tiny arrow at the left to expand and view all the Human Interface Devices. Look for HID-Compliant touch screen in the list, right-click on it, and select Disable device.

When prompted to confirm, click on Yes, and that's it. Your touchscreen is now disabled.

Sometimes, you'll see two items called "HID-Compliant touch screen." In that case, disable both of them.

If you ever miss using your touchscreen in the future, you can always go back into the Device Manager and re-enable it in the same way.

How to Disable the Touchscreen Using Windows Terminal

If you like a sans-GUI approach to doing things on Windows, you can use it to disable touchscreen on Windows 11 as well. Press Ctrl + X to pull up the Power User menu and select Windows Terminal (Admin). This will launch the Windows Terminal window.

Here's the command you'd need to run for disabling touchscreen on Windows 11:

Get-PnpDevice | Where-Object {$_.FriendlyName -like 'touch screen'} | Disable-PnpDevice -Confirm:$false

You can just copy-paste this command into your Windows Terminal and hit Enter. This should disable your touchscreen.

Of course, you can also reenable your touchscreen if you change your mind later with the following command:

Get-PnpDevice | Where-Object {$_.FriendlyName -like 'touch screen'} | Enable-PnpDevice -Confirm:$false

How to Disable the Touchscreen Using the Registry Editor

You can also disable your Windows 11 touchscreen using the Registry Editor. In most cases, it's preferable to use one of the previous methods because editing the registry can sometimes land you in trouble. You can fix a lot of registry errors with a little bit of work, but some changes can have direr consequences.

Even if you're confident about what you're doing, it's always a good idea to backup your registry in case things don't go as planned.

Related: Windows 10 Registry Tweaks to Improve & Unlock Features

To disable Windows 11 touchscreen from the Registry editor, launch the Registry Editor by pressing Win + R, typing regedit, and pressing Enter.

Next, paste the following address into the navigation bar and press Enter:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Wisp\Touch\

Right-click on the whitespace and select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value and name it TouchGate. Set the value to 0 and press OK. Restart your PC to apply the settings. If you want to reenable the touchscreen, just change the TouchGate's value to 1 from 0.

Say Goodbye to Greasy Screens

Nobody likes having to look at distracting fingerprints on the screen and grease that results in a poor viewing experience. If you're convinced about disabling your touchscreen, it's fairly straightforward. Plus, you can always reenable it, so there's no good reason to at least not give it a try.

If you want to disable the touchscreen simply because it doesn't work, hold that thought. There are a few things you can try to fix a touchscreen that isn't working.

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