Stop the cursor from jumping to the corner of the screen on a Lenovo Yoga laptop

I was using Windows 11 on my Lenovo Yoga today, and suddenly my cursor started jumping to the top left corner of my screen. This was happening every few seconds, and it even happened when I wasn't touching the trackpad or screen.

I did the following troubleshooting steps to try to resolve the issue, all of which were unsuccessful:

1. I restarted the computer.
2. I cleaned the sides of the trackpad with a toothpick in case something was stuck.
3. I adjusted the mouse pointer speed in the mouse settings.
4. I performed a clean boot.
5. I updated the drivers and BIOS by using Lenovo System Update several times.
6. I disabled the trackpad in Windows Settings.
7. I disabled the touchscreen using Device Manager and plugged in a mouse.
8. I disabled every mouse listed in Device Manager.
9. I attempted to update the drivers for the mouse, touchscreen, and trackpad.
10. I turned off Bluetooth incase a wireless mouse was somehow connected.
11. I hit my computer hard many times.
12. I created a Pop!_OS bootable USB and booted into it to ensure that it wasn't a Windows setting that was causing this.

Even when I booted into Linux, I was still experiencing my cursor jumping around the screen to the top left corner. Curiously however, the cursor didn't jump around when I was in the system BIOS. This meant that it probably wasn't strictly a hardware issue.

The culprit

The culprit was not the touchpad, touchscreen, or mouse: it was the "Pen."

I found this curious because my Lenovo Yoga did not come with a Pen, nor have I ever used one with this laptop. But disabling the pen fixes the issue.

Disabling the pen on Windows

To disable the pen on Windows, open the start menu, type "Device Manager," then select Device Manager to open it. Inside Device Manager, open Human Interface Devices, right-click HID-compliant pen, then select Disable device.

It may take a few attempts to do this successfully while the cursor is jumping around, but once you disable the pen it should stop the cursor jumping immediately. If you disable the pen and the cursor is still jumping around, then you unfortunately have a different problem.

Disabling the pen on Linux

To disable the pen on Linux, you'll need a package called xinput. I'll let you look up the instructions for installing that on your respective distro.

Once you've ensured that xinput is installed, run the following command to list the devices:

xinput list

xinput should display a list like the one below:

⎡ Virtual core pointer                        id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ SYNACFFE:00 06CB:CEFE Mouse               id=9    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ SYNACFFE:00 06CB:CEFE Touchpad            id=10   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Wacom HID 5362 Pen stylus                 id=11   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Wacom HID 5362 Pen eraser                 id=16   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Wacom HID 5362 Finger touch               id=12   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Logitech USB Optical Mouse                id=8    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                       id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard                 id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                   id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                                id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Ideapad extra buttons                       id=13   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ sof-hda-dsp Headphone                       id=14   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard                id=15   [slave  keyboard (3)]

Look for the entry named Wacom HID 5362 Pen stylus and grab its ID. You can disable the device by it's ID with the following command:

# "11" is the device ID for the pen that we found in the step above.

xinput disable 11

You can run xinput list again to confirm that the pen device has been disabled:

xinput list

⎡ Virtual core pointer                        id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ SYNACFFE:00 06CB:CEFE Mouse               id=9    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ SYNACFFE:00 06CB:CEFE Touchpad            id=10   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Wacom HID 5362 Pen eraser                 id=16   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Logitech USB Optical Mouse                id=8    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Wacom HID 5362 Finger touch               id=12   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                       id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard                 id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                   id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                                id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Ideapad extra buttons                       id=13   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ sof-hda-dsp Headphone                       id=14   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard                id=15   [slave  keyboard (3)]
∼ Wacom HID 5362 Pen stylus  

Once you disable the pen, it should stop the cursor jumping immediately. If you disable the pen and the cursor is still jumping around, then you unfortunately have a different problem.

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I hope you found this helpful. I'm frustrated that I'm experiencing this issue: in the year and a half I've owned this machine I've probably only used it less than 100 hours. If I had purchased the machine for digital art I'd be furious. Thankfully I'm terrible at art, so I can continue using this machine without missing the pen functionality.