Inverse mouse pointer
My wife had just switched from windows to the latest Mint (Cinnamon). The one thing she misses from windows is the mouse pointer. It animates so that it's light coloured on dark objects and dark on light objects. It makes it easy for her to find.
Anyone know how to do this in Cinnamon?
That sounds like an XOR pointer, which did used to be a standard feature in Windows. There were patents on it and xorg were threatened with legal action by the patent holder, so I don’t think it was ever added to X. Those patents have probably expired now, so it may be possible to do.
Then I suggest they use an XNOR pointer instead! Checkmate patent trolls!
Or 5 NAND pointers.
https://github.com/jinliu/kwin-effect-xorcursor
Kwin won't load C++ plugins from your home directory, so you have to install it to /usr
This sounds cool but the wife in question uses Cinnamon.
Yes, this is also the only implementation of this I could find. I'm not sure if the cinnamon js api is capable of something similar.
Yeah, unfortunately there's no inverse mouse cursor theme. I loved it on windows as well. What I'm using now is this "Hackneyed high contrast cursors" theme, the green one to be specific, and I absolutely love it. ::: spoiler Example. :::
I don't actually know, but I assume mouse themes are universal? Or does KDE mouse themes now work with Cinnamon?
::: spoiler In KDE Plasma there's also a setting where you can shake your cursor to make it bigger, although I don't feel like I need it. ::: I read that there's an extension for Cinnamon that does the same, although I also saw a bug report that it might be broken, idk. Worth a shot. Here's how to enable it.
I dunno about that exact cursor but you can have a look here to see if any catch their eye.
I read the title and for some reason thought you'd mean that the whole screen is black except for the cursor, which would let the what ever was under it shine through.
Sort of like when a fps has a torch only level.
That'd be interesting!
This is definitively not a default Windows mouse pointer and neither will be in any other environment, you have to customize it.
Do you just want black pointer with white border or white pointer with a black pointer? What’s the issue?
Or maybe a feature like in KDE or MacOS that shaking the mouse makes the pointer extremely large for a brief moment?
I have to disagree.
The inverted cursor is part of the default Windows mouse cursor themes.
@OP I don't think it's a default on any Linux Desktop Environments though. But you might be able to find a theme that does this. Perhaps a relevant forum post, that mentioned a keyboard shortcut to quickly locate your cursor.
You are disagreeing and then saying totally correct other thing that I also agree with.
Yes, the inverted cursor themes are installed in every Windows, they are not enabled by default, you have to go to options and enable them, which is a part of customizing your installation to your needs.
I wouldn't count "selecting a different theme" as customizing. But yes, seems we do agree.