brain-dump/ux-stuff/custom-cursor.md

Custom Cursor (Without Restart) on Gnome-based Linux Desktops

There's a lot of custom cursors for Linux-based distros on sites like Opendesktop / "pling" or Deviantart.

The following instructions are for distros using Gnome desktop.

1. First, make sure you've extracted the theme and inside the theme-name folder, a cursor.theme file exists, in the following format:

   [Icon Theme]
   Name=nameoftheme
   

2. Then, put the theme somewhere, I added themename to ~/.local/share/icons

3. As sudo or root, run the following (adjust path/filename of themename to suit):

   update-alternatives --install /usr/share/icons/default/index.theme x-cursor-theme /home/angela/.local/share/icons/themename/cursor.theme 10
   

4. Run update-alternatives again, to show a list of available cursor themes:

   update-alternatives --config x-cursor-theme
   

5. You'll be shown a list of themes you can pick from, type the corresponding number of the theme you want to use:

There are 2 choices for the alternative x-cursor-theme (providing /usr/share/icons/default/index.theme).

  Selection    Path                                                     Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
  0            /usr/share/icons/Adwaita/cursor.theme                     90        auto mode
* 1            /home/angela/.local/share/icons/themename/cursor.theme   10        manual mode

Press <enter> to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number:

1. To set it without requiring a logout, hit ALT + F2 and in the prompt, type r to restart Gnome shell (if using a laptop keyboard, try CNTRL + ALT + F2)