The upcoming [1]Linux 6.18 kernel is expected to land initial haptic touchpad support as part of the HID subsystem updates.

Haptic touchpads contain force sensors and haptic actuators in place of a traditional button. Haptic touchpads can eliminate mechnical parts and provide a nice clicking effect across the entire touchpad. Google has been [2]leading the work on haptic touchpads for Linux in motivated by their own Chrome/Chromium OS efforts.

The initial haptic touchpad support and wiring it up to the Linux HID multi-touch driver is queued up to the hid-next branch ahead of the Linux 6.18 merge window.

This Linux 6.18 haptic touchpad support is initially tailored around the Elan 2703 haptic touchpad but in the future will surely be extended to more parts coming to market.

The haptic touchpad support is in [3]for-6.18/haptic as part of HID.git and since merged to HID's for-next Git branch and thus expected to be submitted as part of the upcoming Linux 6.18 merge window.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Linux+6.18

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Google-Haptic-Touchpads-2025

[3] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/hid/hid.git/log/?h=for-6.18/haptic