Highlight mouse for screencasts without disturbing workflow

cursormousescreencasting

For making documentation/tutorial videos, I need to highlight the mouse, for example with a yellow translucent corona around it:

enter image description here

The marker should be active when clicking and moving, but if it's on all the time, that's just as fine.

It can obscure the view on what is behind it to some degree but it may not disable being able to click what is behind it or take focus away from windows.

Compiz seems like a thing of the past, find-cursor isn't tied to any actions (clicks/movements) and blocks interaction (while it's drawing, you can't click "through" it) and key-mon doesn't draw correctly, disables interaction as well and is generally buggy when it comes to the mouse highlighter, at least with a tiling window manager.

I'm using Arch Linux and awesome wm.

Thanks!

Best Answer

Use a custom mouse theme that follows the XDG specification.

This could be the easiest way to introduce the marker. I suppose this just adds a translucent circle layer to the cursor or simpler. Even better, this approach will most likely applicable for both X11 and Wayland cursor themes, as noted in this ArchWiki.

How to create mouse theme

Do we have to create the custom mouse theme? Yes, if the user prefers to create one by own. This could be time consuming and most users will need to do some readings.

The most recent discussion on "creating icon themes" is circa 2015, which is found in this thread on Linux.org. It covers little bit on cursors and generously provides more links for further reading.

Several older tutorials circa 2010 mentioned this GIMP plug-in for creating X11 mouse cursor (XMC). Another approach is using Xcursorgen program, which is explained in this article on ehow.com.

Or without creating theme

Then again, do we need to create one? No, because some users already created such themes. Most users will just have to search, download and install it.

I found that DMZ-Highlight by MBOSSG is a simple and elegant solution.

It is a custom mouse theme for Ubuntu/Linux that has translucent yellow circle below the cursor, which is almost exactly what the question had described. As the name hints, DMZ-Highlight (left) is based on DMZ white variant from DMZ cursor themes.

DMZ-Highlight and DMZ white compared

Does DMZ-Hightlight work?

  • highlighted marker: Yes
  • translucent yellow: Yes
  • active marker: Yes, when clicking and moving ^1
  • disable clicking: No ^2
  • steal focus: No ^2

^1: visible all the time for most UI elements, except text input will show the usual I cursor

DMZ-Highlight against Mousepad

^2: the mouse theme neither obstructs nor takes focus away from windows, just the usual cursor with a highlight under it

DMZ-Highlight against UI elements and desktop

Disclaimer: This answer is intended to suggest the easiest way to introduce the marker on cursor. As such, this answer shall not explain on "how to install mouse theme" (This should be covered by a separate question and answer).

The author of DMZ-Highlight had provided install and uninstall scripts, which are convenient for Ubuntu users. In my case, the cursor was manually installed and configured via sudo update-alternative commands, as I prefer this way.

Tested DMZ-Highlight in Xubuntu 14.04 (Xfce 4.10).

TL;DR Install a custom mouse theme, which will highlight the cursor. Zero scripts, works all the time.

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