Animated Cursors
43 comments
·July 25, 2025baq
jasonjmcghee
I think was popularized by Neovide
danieldk
Kitty also supports them with the cursor_trail option: https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/conf/#opt-kitty.cursor_trail
nine_k
Here it's less dramatic and hence more useful.
I wish more terminals implemented something similar.
tombh
Author here, I just chose the fire cursor for the demo. There are lots of other shaders available, eg https://github.com/KroneCorylus/ghostty-shader-playground/tr..., they have a simple smear cursor like Neovide's.
smohare
[dead]
echelon
I never knew this was a thing.
This is so fucking cool. I'm going to add this right away.
tombh
The home page has GIFs of both a simpler smear-fade cursor and a wilder manga-slash cursor https://tattoy.sh
rendaw
Where? I only see the fire one too.
ldjb
Under the Animated Cursors heading. Here are direct links to the webms if you still can't find them:
Rendello
Reminds me of the old Compiz plugin that would make your windows burst into flames on closing.
kingforaday
I applaud this effort and think it is amazing graphically for a tty, but serious question: does anyone use this as their daily driver?
tombh
I'm the creator of Tattoy, so thanks. A significant part of the motivation for the project is that it's fun, like a "toy", as the name suggests. I do use it everyday, but only for one serious usecase, to allow my Twitch chatters to visually interact with my terminal by sending emotes to it. I'm not personally into the animated cursors, they were just easy to implement because I'd already built out support for Ghostty's background shaders.
But, if you want a truly serious usecase, then my pipe dream is that Tattoy becomes the "XWayland" for an entirely new protocol for terminals that explores moving on from ANSI codes, the terminfo database and so on. I wrote a blog post about this idea: https://tattoy.sh/news/an-end-to-terminal-ansi-codes
VTimofeenko
As in the cursor trailing to new position? I use it, albeit on a different emulator.
Greatly helps when demoing something from my terminal and having multiple splits open.
magicalhippo
Looks very nice and fun, and potentially very useful. I was going to say I'd prefer a gradient effect to emulate motion blur, but stepping through the video I see you've already implemented something like that.
However, when making large moves, it seems a bit disorienting and the gradient effect seems very subtle in the video. Perhaps make the effect depend on distance, like actual motion blur would?
I was also thinking about having a color shift when moving up vs moving down, not sure about that one but certainly something I'd play with.
thanhhaimai
For a demo of the new Cursor feature in Ghostty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enwDjM7pNNE
eviks
Have you ever lost track of the cursor to require a trail? (and if yes, what shape/color was the cursor)
iforgotpassword
Yes, happens occasionally. I just wiggle it left/right or up/down so I can see where it is. No big deal. But put of curiosity I might still try that one day, with a more subtle effect though. ;)
eviks
What's the shape/color? I guess, non-blinking?
(they have other effects, check effects in neovide for better defaults)
pimlottc
I assumed this meant mouse cursors, so I was confused why the pointer didn’t move in the same video. Would have been better just to turn it off for the recording.
ipsum2
Wonder what this looks like in asciinema. Does it show up properly?
I wasn't able to get this working. MacOS, homebrew, added [animated_cursor] to the tattoy.toml and the glsl file.
tombh
It very much should work on asciinema, it's all pure text after all.
I'd very much appreciate a bug report. It looks like maybe Tattoy isn't connecting to the GPU on Mac: https://github.com/tattoy-org/tattoy/issues/129
ionwake
I installed it with homebrew but I dont see this shader tracer, I even see the blue pixel top right. Ive read the docs but it doesnt seem to explain if I need to do anything further which means it must be my already customised iterm which is the issue. Ill see if I can sort it.
tombh
The creator here, sounds like I need to improve the docs. Did you set `enabled = true` in the `[animated_cursors]` section of the config? If so, then this could be bug, and I'd be very grateful for a report in the repo's issues: https://github.com/tattoy-org/tattoy
Vlasar
Sorry if I’m missing something, but isn’t the homebrew version outdated?
ionwake
tbh im not sure what Im doing wrong, I already have a highly customised iterm window and have spent a hour with chatgpt trying to troubleshoot this to no avail... must just be my setup for some reason. I will let you know if I figure it out - thanks
isoprophlex
Barely useable, pfff. Needs at least two out of three of
- airhorn and/or light saber sound effects,
- a sixel-based rendering of lens flares, or
- a fluid dynamics engine to simulate rippling of characters around the path along which the cursor moves
(Joke, looks very cool even though i'd probably find it too distracting)
Nevermark
> - airhorn and/or light saber sound effects,
I will take the light saber sounds.
With stereo-spacial transformation, so the sounds "direction" and "distance" match my own physical dynamic orientation relative to the cursor's motion on the screen.
And, the ability to open a small window, which gives me the cursor's visual point-of-view, as it zooms through the graphics on the screen.
Also, each traversed character should get "hot" as the curser goes over it, indicated with a stable glow for a quarter of a second, followed by an exponential fade over another second.
I think we can all agree that when in flow, functional distractions need to work harder, be more immersive, to be effective.
somat
Here you go.
mholm
iTerm2 has a basic animated cursor that I like, just a frame or two long, and fairly subtle. It would be nice if it expanded to support this type of animation, I do wish it were a bit more visible (though not, perhaps, the EDM show presented)
renewiltord
This is pretty cool. Helps trace where the cursor is going. I prefer the Ghostty style now that I see it, but nonetheless cool UI feature.
This is way cooler than I expected.
It's an over-the-top animation of a terminal cursor moving from position to position, helps notice where it moved to. I thought it'll be something about mouse cursor animations. I could see myself using this if a) I was using more TUI apps and b) it'd be toned down quite a bit.