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I'm planning to record some tutorial videos. How do I make a mouse pointer/cursor with yellow circle around it on Ubuntu 16.04, so my students could see where I am?

marli
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Kristaps G
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4 Answers4

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There is no large, colored, or animated mouse cursor by default.

To show the mouse position there is a gsetting key to allow showing the cursor position with orange circles upon pressing and releasing the Ctrl key:

![enter image description here

The key is located in org.gnome.desktop.interface locate-pointer accessible through dconf-editor as shown above or in a terminal with

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface locate-pointer true
Takkat
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    It may be helpful to know `gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.mouse locate-pointer true` appears to be persistent across reboots and you don't need to add it to `/etc/rc.local` or any other startup areas. – WinEunuuchs2Unix Jan 05 '18 at 19:03
  • It does not work very well. If you use nautilus to rename a file (f2) and then try to copy the file using control+c then the 'locate-pointer' func interfer and you cannot copy the file name into the clipboard (16.04 LTS). I had to disable it. – Rudy Vissers Feb 02 '18 at 15:04
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    It works fine, but it requires pressing Ctrl each time. I'd like to configure it like: enable it when I press some keys + disable it when I press some keys. Sometimes I want it to be there for more seconds / minutes. – ROMANIA_engineer Oct 20 '19 at 21:36
  • @ROMANIA_engineer: this most likely is hardcoded and can't be changed. – Takkat Oct 20 '19 at 21:48
  • @ROMANIA_engineer on my 4K screen with two other screens this isn't as good for me as it used to be. I was thinking of changing code to five to ten times bigger with black and white colors instead of washed out orange. You could try searching for the source code too. – WinEunuuchs2Unix Oct 20 '19 at 22:23
  • On Ubuntu 20.04 I had to use `gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface locate-pointer true` ... apparently the setting got moved around or so?! – 0xC0000022L Jun 23 '21 at 09:26
  • @0xC0000022L well spotted, thank you very much. It indeed moved around a bit. Tested and works in 21.04 too. – Takkat Jun 24 '21 at 19:41
23

Highlight Pointer Using Cursor Themes

I recently wanted to do this as well. I ended up at this answer which had some broken links and left me still in search of themes that someone else had surely created. I found one I liked. Here's an animated GIF of what I ended up with and how I got it working.

The end result image.gif

Finding a cursor theme

When I realized that this could be accomplished with a cursor theme (duh!), I went in search of some themes. I eventually ended up here, and after looking through a number of pages of different cursors, I settled on this one. To download, click the files tab and then download the .tar.gz file for the cursor theme.

Installing and enabling the cursor for screencasting

With the cursor theme downloaded, I got to work on installing it.

  • The file I downloaded contains multiple themes (each a different color halo) so I first extracted the contents to a temp folder

    tar -xzf /path/to/download/160115-bDMZT.tar.gz -C /tmp/

  • Then I copied the cyan theme to the proper directory, renaming it screencast

    sudo cp -r /tmp/bDMZT/abDMZ/ /usr/share/icons/screencast/

  • Before enabling the new cursor theme, I made note of the current theme.

    OLD_THEME=$(gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-theme) && echo $OLD_THEME

  • At this point, all that was left to do was to enable the theme.

    gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-theme screencast

If the new theme is active for some applications but not others or if it does not appear to be active at all, you may need to completely terminate all instances of the applications for which it is not active or log off entirely and log back in.

Changing back to the default cursor

Once you're finished your screencast, you may want to switch back to your previous theme (the system default is DMZ-White). To do this, run:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-theme "$OLD_THEME"

Extra 2-cents

There are also programs available to show mouse clicks and key presses which can be really helpful in screencasts.

b_laoshi
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Yellow circle can be done by installing any one of the following software:

  1. Cam studio: Is an open source windows software. Install it using wine then go to cursor settings. There is a cursor highlight.
  2. RealWorld Cursor Editor: Also for Windows. Using this, you can directly edit your mouse properties.

  3. vokoscreen: To install sudo apt-get install vokoscreen

  4. cairo-dock there is a add on to highlight the mouse pointer.

  5. Use gnome-tweak-tool.

ravery
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Sai Kumar
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I have not tested this, but I think it's the right answer.

  • Open compiz config: sudo apt install compizconfig-settings-manager && ccsm
  • Look for plugin Show mouse, under Accessibility - ENABLE it..
  • Play with it, to see if that's okay :)

You'll need compiz-plugins package to have this option.

screenshot

Pablo Bianchi
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Joakim Koed
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    The "Show mouse" plugin has no effect for me on Ubuntu 16.04 with Gnome 3.18. – CivMeierFan Feb 07 '18 at 18:19
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    Couldn't find "Show mouse" plugin on Ubuntu 18.04 with Gnome 3.28.2 after installing compiz-config-settings-manager. There is only "Mouse poll interval" setting under accessibility options. – Dmitry Somov Aug 15 '19 at 09:40
  • if you need to install `compiz-plugins` for Ubuntu12 and above: `sudo apt-get install compiz-plugins` – Mariam Jan 14 '21 at 20:45