Locate Cursor (in Gnome)

Jun 11, 2020 cursor ubuntu linux gnome usability

My current work from home setup is pretty good, but with two very different sized monitors, and my spare mouse that turns itself off to save power, I have a tendency to mislay the mouse cursor. I guess it’s part of getting older too? Er. Anyway, Macs have a nice feature that makes the cursor get larger when you ‘shake’ it, and I wondered if there was something equivalent in Gnome (i.e. on Ubuntu).

It’s not exactly the same (not as good I’d say) but there is a feature you can turn on in Gnome to animate a “ripple” around the cursor when you hold down the control key. Good enough for my purposes.

As is so often the case (a rant for another time) it’s hidden away, but you can turn it on with the gsettings tool (installable via apt get gsettings if not already set up for you).

On my work issued Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS machine:

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.mouse locate-pointer true

On my personal Ubuntu 20.04 LTS machine:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface locate-pointer true

They’ll probably move it again in future releases, but you can find it by searching for the appropriate key in gsettings:

gsettings list-recursively | grep locate-pointer

Good to know. And next time I look for it I’ll hopefully remember to check this post :)