M2 MacBook Air: palm and resting-thumb rejection improvements and current support status #658

Description

I use Fedora Asahi Remix on an Apple MacBook Air (13-inch, M2, 2022), and would like to request improved palm and resting-thumb rejection for its internal trackpad, along with clarification of the current support status.

Current system information:

• Fedora Linux Asahi Remix 44, KDE Plasma Desktop Edition
• Kernel: 7.2.12-402.asahi.fc44.aarch64+16k
• libinput: 1.31.3-1.fc44.aarch64

Desired behavior: accidental palm contacts and a resting thumb should be ignored while intentional finger movement, clicks, scrolling, and gestures remain usable.

Could maintainers clarify:

1. Which parts of palm and thumb rejection currently depend on Apple firmware, the kernel driver, and libinput on this model?
2. Are there ongoing improvements or an existing tracking issue for either palm or thumb rejection?
3. Should model-specific improvements be pursued here or in libinput, and what recordings or diagnostics would be useful to evaluate them?

Related work:

• Enable palm rejection by default? #280 — earlier discussion of enabling palm rejection by default.
• Hid magicmouse palm rejection #480 — proposed kernel palm-rejection changes, closed without merging after the author identified a virtual-keyboard/disable-while-typing configuration issue. I am not treating that proposal as an established fix or evidence of a defect on my machine.
• https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/palm-detection.html#thumb-detection — libinput's separate resting-thumb detection.

This is an enhancement/support-status request rather than a diagnosed kernel regression. No controlled input-event reproduction or firmware root cause has been established for this report. If another tracker is appropriate, please point me to it.

Repro Steps

1. Open a text editor and place the pointer over the document.
2. Type normally with your palms in their usual resting position, occasionally touching the trackpad edges.
3. Check for unintended pointer movement, clicks, or movement of the text insertion point.
4. Separately, rest your thumb near the bottom of the trackpad while moving the pointer with your index finger.
5. Check whether the thumb causes unintended scrolling, gestures, or clicks.
6. Repeat with “Disable touchpad while typing” enabled, and note whether tap-to-click is enabled.
   Expected: Palm contacts and a resting thumb are ignored while intentional finger input works.

Expected Behaviour

The trackpad should ignore accidental palm contact while typing and a resting thumb during pointer use. These contacts should not move the pointer, trigger clicks, or cause scrolling or gestures.

Intentional finger movement, clicks, scrolling, and gestures should remain responsive.

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Please agree to the following

• I have reproduced this on Fedora Asahi Remix
• I have isolated this issue to software vendored by Asahi Linux
• I am not acting as a meat proxy for an LLM