Synaptics TouchPad Driver with 2-Finger tap in Windows 10

Background

You may have updated to Windows 10 only to find that you do not have an appropriate Synaptics TouchPad driver. You used to be able to download these drivers directly from Synaptics, and they would usually work fine, but they no longer provide generic drivers.
I have a Dell Studio 1555 laptop and did a clean install of Windows 10. This left me with a generic PS/2 mouse driver, but I soon was able to get it going with all the bells and whistles we now expect from laptop touchpads!

Get the driver

I used a Lenovo Synaptics driver from the following URL – it’s v16.6.4.13 released July 1, 2015:
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/downloads/ds032247
If that link has been removed, here’s an archived version of the v16.6.4.13 driver.

Install and Reboot

Install the driver you just downloaded and reboot. If you open Device Manager, you’ll see the pointing device listed as a “Lenovo Pointing Device,” but that’s OK. It’s still your regular Synaptics touchpad, just with a Lenovo name in the driver.

Enable two-finger tapping – this is the key

If you open the old style Mouse control panel, you’ll see the Synaptics tab where you can set mouse settings. However, this doesn’t give you the option to enable two finger taps. You have to do this in the Registry in two places.

1. Open Regedit.exe
2. Open Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Synaptics\SynTP
3. Create a Win10 key (folder).
4. Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Synaptics\SynTP\Win10, create a DWORD 32-bit called 2FingerTapAction and set it to 2
5. Open Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Synaptics\SynTP\TouchPadPS2.
6. Find the 2FingerTapAction key and set it to 2.
7. Restart, and your two finger taps should now work!