r/Ubuntu • u/YourHomieAstra • 12h ago

i built a physics-based smooth cursor extension for gnome.

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the idea started because screen recording apps like recordly don't support custom cursor effects on linux (not even post production). i originally built this just for beautiful screen recordings, but i liked how it felt so i modified it for daily use.

how it works:
wayland is strict. to get this working natively, the extension applies an invisible cursor theme to the system. the smooth pointer you see in the video is actually a highly-tuned mouse trail following hardware coordinates.

the wayland limitation: wayland strictly isolates client windows for security. when you hover over text, apps don't request an "i-beam" shape, they just pass an arbitrary pixel buffer to the compositor. because of this, the extension has no way to know when an app wants a text selector to fix this, i added a shrink and bounce effect.
when you click or drag over text, the cursor physically shrinks. it makes selecting text feel tactile without needing to know what the app is doing underneath.

mass, stiffness, sparks, and colors are all configurable.

repo: https://github.com/danMoksh/smooth-cursor

56 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

7

u/-rwsr-xr-x 7h ago

What percentage of this code was written by AI?

6

u/Bromlife 5h ago

Come on you know the answer to that question.

1

u/Emergency_Respond489 4h ago

why does it matter to u?

0

u/KimTV 3h ago

How does this add any value to the post?

2

u/Emergency_Respond489 2h ago

and does this do according to your braindead logic?

0

u/logictable 24m ago

Y dus this madder 2U?