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Finally, I was having issues with the blurriness of the big pointer
common KDE w
So even though I have been using KDE for months now, I had no idea that the cursor would continue to get bigger if you keep shaking it, thats amazing.
I remember when this feature was added to MacOS, it must be like a decade ago now. It had the same thing where if you really put some elbow grease into the saking the cursor just got bigger and bigger but it was vector based so it never became pixilated. It was weirdly fun to do, and I often told friends to try it and all of them found it as fun as I did.
As someone who’s eye sight is getting worse, I really love this KDE Plasma feature.
yeah, I mean, I only have 2 monitors, but since I use the sway window manager, I have it configured to automatically highlight the window that my cursor is under, so it kind of supersedes the need for a cursor locator. And all but my active window are set to dim as well, makes finding where I’m at much easier.
I feel like it could easily be explained in a tutorial or something I completely ignored, found out about it by sitting a mouse on corner of glass desk.
Dude, everyone I show this too loves this feature. It’s such a simple solution to an ongoing issue.
Back when I used Windows, many years ago, I used to have the setting that drew a ring around the cursor when you pressed ctrl. It was annoying when you used ctrl for anything else, and it was also visually ugly. You also had to remember about it when you lost the mouse, which is more difficult than it sounds like.
Needless to say, I love this feature from KDE. Not only is it way more intuitive to use and more unlikely to accidentally happen, but it also looks way better. And the fact that it keeps growing indefinitely is such a nice and fun addition.
Windows PowerToys still offers this feature, and the shortcut can be remapped and disabled.
I think I’ve got it set to triple Ctrl on my work laptop? Really helps reduce the accidental triggers.
As an aside - I’m still trying to find a similar solution to FancyZones for CachyOS, don’t suppose you have any suggestions?
I really love this feature, it gives me something to do while waiting for pages to load in Firefox.
When I connect to my living room TV, I can have a cursor over three feet tall.
My daughter holds the current household record by getting the cursor size so big that the whole screen is blank.
Gnome is awesome but KDE is just the goat for people likeme who enjoy redesigning more than using it.
This is genuinely a useful feature for people who easily lose their cursor.
Didn’t notice this before literally this made me test it.
without features that few people are going to use
Every KDE user has shaken the mouse once just to see how big it gets, this is a critical feature!
I knew the cursor got bigger but I didn’t know it would keep growing.
It jumps up quickly to a bigger size and then keeps increasing more slowly if you keep shaking it.
It all depends on the stimulation.
if your cursor enlarges for over 4 hours please see a doctor
That way they can admire it too
That was the thing I texted my friends about when I started using KDE. 😄 I loved it, perfect self-affording feature.
yeah, I have a 65" TV connected and it gets comically large. I wouldn’t be nearly as productive without it.
I use it probably ten times a day!
I’ve never even tried this, but now I’m gonna have to give it a whirl.
Super useful for if, like myself, you lose track of your cursor quite often.
“He can’t see us if we don’t move.”
Except that I usually AM moving it…just sometimes ADHD brain goes:
OMFG! WHAT’S THAT OVER THERE!
And then I have no idea where the cursor is even when I’m moving it. I had no idea about the cursor enlargement effect until one day my mouse ran out of battery and wasn’t waking up fast enough, so I was clicking and moving it back and forth really fast…got a bit of a fright when it suddenly got several times larger.
I sometimes do it at work out of boredom
Now that I think about it, I should shake the cursor in KDE more.
Beeeg
Doesn’t work for me in KDE anymore???
Edit:
It stopped working because I switched back to X11, it only works in Wayland, but I had to switch back, I think it was because some hot keys don’t work and can’t be configured under Wayland. Or at least couldn’t when I configured my system about a year ago.The secret reason Wayland is superior.
Unfortunately I had to switch back to X11 because Plasma on Wayland lacked a feature I need.
Well, now X11 lacks a feature you want…
I did it often until i learned it crashes some games :(
If Gnome ran a restaurant, the waiter chooses the meal for you, and tut & shake their head if you try to deviate from it.
If KDE ran a restaurant, if you shake the menu it’ll grow exponentially in size until it fills the restaurant.The gnome type of restaurant is called prix fixe, and it very much exists.
That type of restaurant tends to be among the best in the world.
Which makes sense. If each day you offer one choice you can make that one really good.
But for someone who doesn’t like that specific food it doesn’t work. They’d prefer having different options.
Kind of similar with gnome and KDE.
If Gnome ran a restaurant, the waiter chooses the meal for you, and tut & shake their head if you try to deviate from it.
And if you want to add salt and pepper to your meal, there’s a convenient store across the street that sells salt and pepper shakers. No, the Gnome restaurant will not be providing them.
I’m a GNOME user and extensions are pretty easy to install. I use the wiggly extension for the mouse shake to grow thing, but unfortunately it has a maximum size of 256 which is plenty big enough to find it but you can’t shake it forever until it grows bigger than the screen. GNOME 0 KDE 1 🥲
I will update as soon as I have found my cursor on my 4k screen.
Don’t quote me on this but I think it’s somewhere to the right side of the screen. Somewhere in the chat window I think.
GNOME’s design philosophy is “we’ve determined that nobody needs this feature”.
KDE’s is “we’ve determined that nobody needs this feature… but it would be really cool, fuck it, we
ballcube”.fuck it, we
ballcubeThis is KDE we’re talking about, so it would definitely be “fuck it, we kube”.
Well who needs systrays anyways? While we’re at it, let’s remove theming support too! Surely nobody would miss that feature?
I really miss KDE. Sadly my experience with new major versions (5, 6) tends to be that plasma is unstable for daily use for at least a year or two. I’ll be back once things settle down a bit.
Plasma 6 has been nothing but great for me! Not a single crash ever since it released. It’s nothing like the beginning of Plasma 5
Sadly my problems are with buggy applications, and hdr (more of a monitor issue than plasma itself). I’m hoping these get patched as more people yell at bad wayland support and poorly implemented hdr.
Somehow, under GNOME things “just work”. Or at least it doesn’t take down the entire session.
“we’ve determined that nobody needs this feature”
How? Trust me bro! Users hate features, they get all confused and stuff. That’s why nobody should ever choose anything, the OS should just be shit forever. We also get paid by Microsoft and IBM coincidentally.
The massive cursor during shake is literally what sold two of my friends on Garuda getting them off Windows 😂 idk why I guess the wimsy factor is difficult to account for.
The cube thing from compiz had a similar effect back in the earlier years of Ubuntu.
Compiz was insanely cool, it was better than anything we have today.
I use burn my windows and desktop cube with Gnome extensions. Kwin still supports many of these effects too. It’s fun to see people’s reaction.
Some of the effects have become mainstream. But there is no comparison to the real Compiz feel.
For instance the original Emerald windows dresser was amazing, and zooming with the scroll wheel combined with for instance the left win key was extremely useful. The smoothness and configurability of the cube was crazy cool.What is available today is hollow shells of what we had.
Yes I use wobbly windows in KDE, but Compiz is 100x > Plasma.Writing fire on the desktop and window animations like burn up on exit were also awesome.
KDE cube always feels like watching a b-movie version starwars. Nailed the wobbly windows though.
Compiz and cairo-dock is peak nostalgic linux for me. Tux surfing around the dock and all.
Oh boy I’m getting all nostalgic, it’s 20 years ago it came out now!
Yeah, Compiz and Emerald were the goat!
We still have Compiz today, you can still run it.
Thanks and yes I know.
But AFAIK it was mostly limited to Ubuntu Unity and XFCE for a long time, and support became shaky.
I actually looked it up just before, and it seems Mint has support for it, but looking at the emerald themes it looks nothing like it did back in the day where it was new and revolutionizing. Also I’m lazy, I don’t care to fiddle so much with my computer anymore.
Yeah, I love just shaking the mouse when I’m bored or waiting for something to finish downloading.
Sometimes I jiggle the mouse just to see how big I can make it
Well, my first thought was also “I need to try it” so they are not alone
I’ll be happy when the cursor can be inverted color like windows.
Good news: The feature you want has been a part of KDE since forever. Cursors are fully customizable with different cursor packs being available. Installing a cursor pack is very simple, just look through the different packs, select the one you want and click install. There’s so many different kinds available, one is probably to your liking. And if it isn’t you can probably find an artist easily enough and commission your own set.
I’m talking about a windows feature that activity changes the cursor to be the inverse of the content underneath it. If content = black, then curosr = white. If content = white, then cursor = black.
It’s not so simple as downloading a curosr pack with different colored icons.
I searched the web and results are all just various forms with the feature requested, but no feature. One rumor floating around is Windows might have a patent on it or something, but I didn’t go digging for that info.
I just changed my cursor color to gold.
I feel like a patent would’ve run out by now. From what I’m finding online, US patents generally only last 15-20 years. They might’ve filed it in a different country, and yesterday I read of a media codec patent lasting 25 years in Brazil.
But yeah, I believe that feature was in there before 2000 already, and they didn’t innovate on it since, which might’ve allowed for a new or renewed patent.It might also just be a pain to implement…
This is the only cursor setting ive never used for very long because its so easy to lose. May i ask why you use it?
So much this
White cursor with a bold black outline is king IMO
It’s visible on everything!
I did not know this existed, this is amazing