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TSG: Touch input goes to the wrong display on Windows

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Overview

On Windows, if you have a pen display that supports touch, you may find that if you touch the pen display, it will act as if you are touching a different display.

This is a common thing people run into with displays that support touch on Windows. It's not the fault of the pen display and it can be easily fixed.

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Background

When you attach a device that supports touch input, by default Windows will map its touch input to the "main display". And most often this will NOT be your pen display.

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OPTION #1: Set your pen display to be the main display

  • Open Display Settings

  • Click on the display that corresponds to your pen display

  • Enable "Make this my main display"

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Option #2: Configure Windows to send touch input to the a different display

  • Open Control Panel

  • Find and open Tablet PC Settings (you can search for it in the Control Panel search bar)

  • In Tablet PC Settings, under Display > Configure tab, click Setup

  • Select Touch input

  • On the screen you'll be asked to follow some instructions to identify which display touch should go it. Follow those instructions. The procedure will flow like this:

    • One of the screens will go all white

    • If that is the screen where you want to have touch go to, then touch the screen

    • If it isn't, then hit ENTER to try a different screen. In turn that screen will go white and the process repeats

    • The procedure ends the moment you have touched one of the screens.

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Links

  • By default, touch on the tablet will normally map to whichever display is your "main monitor".

  • You can map touch back to the tablet when it is not the main monitor. See this document from Huion: How to make finger gestures control Kamvas Studio 16/Kamvas Pro 19/Kamvas Pro 27 instead of the external monitorarrow-up-right. When I first tried this, it fixed the touch problem, but it had an odd interaction with the pen - when I used the pen on the tablet, the pointer always stayed near the top border. After I uninstalled the driver, restarted the computer, and reinstalled the driver, the problem went away and the pen worked normally.

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