How to disable laptop internal keyboard on Fedora 41

My laptop keyboard is really bad and over the years, the heat has made the keys harder to type on and some key clips has also broke. So I thought of slapping my PC mechanical keyboard on my laptop but whenever I tried laying the keyboard on top of my laptop, my poor laptop keyboard kept jumping in—typing random letters and messing up my flow. I have tested this on Fedora 41 and 42 running on wayland.

What You'll Need

Terminal access with sudo privileges
The commands: libinput, udevadm, and a text editor (e.g. nano or vim)

Step 1: Identify Your Built-In Keyboard

Open a terminal and type:

libinput list-devices

Scroll until you see something like:

Device:           AT Translated Set 2 keyboard
Kernel:           /dev/input/event3

That "AT Translated Set 2 keyboard" is your laptop's built-in board. Jot down the exact name and the eventX number—you'll need both in the next steps.

Step 2: Double-Check with `udevadm`

Just to be sure, confirm its properties:

udevadm info /dev/input/event3

You should see lines like:

E: NAME="AT Translated Set 2 keyboard"
E: ID_INPUT_KEYBOARD=1

If you don't, swap in the right eventX and try again.

Step 3: Write the udev Rule

Create a new rule file:

sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/99-disable-internal-keyboard.rules

Paste in this one-liner (adjust the name exactly if yours differs):

ACTION=="add|change", ATTRS{name}=="AT Translated Set 2 keyboard", ENV{ID_INPUT_KEYBOARD}=="1", ENV{LIBINPUT_IGNORE_DEVICE}="1"

– This tells libinput to completely ignore that device

Step 4: Reload Rules & Test

Apply without rebooting:

sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
sudo udevadm trigger

If it doesn't work, try rebooting

Re-enable Your Laptop Keyboard

When you want it back, simply:

sudo rm /etc/udev/rules.d/99-disable-internal-keyboard.rules
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
sudo udevadm trigger

Final Thoughts

Now I can sit on my bed, slap my beloved external keyboard right on top, and type away.

Thanks for reading! 😁