Animated Cursors

(tattoy.sh)

187 points | by speckx 16 hours ago

18 comments

  • baq 16 hours ago
    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.

  • kingforaday 14 hours ago
    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 14 hours ago
      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 9 hours ago
      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 6 hours ago
    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 13 hours ago
    For a demo of the new Cursor feature in Ghostty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enwDjM7pNNE
  • coldblues 14 hours ago
  • eviks 5 hours ago
    Have you ever lost track of the cursor to require a trail? (and if yes, what shape/color was the cursor)
    • iforgotpassword 4 hours ago
      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 3 hours ago
        What's the shape/color? I guess, non-blinking?

        (they have other effects, check effects in neovide for better defaults)

  • pimlottc 15 hours ago
    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 9 hours ago
    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.

  • ionwake 14 hours ago
    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 14 hours ago
      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 6 hours ago
        Sorry if I’m missing something, but isn’t the homebrew version outdated?
      • ionwake 13 hours ago
        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 16 hours ago
    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)

    • 0xFEE1DEAD 27 minutes ago
      Testimonial:

      > I've never been asked to pair up eversince I've started using tattoy

    • Nevermark 15 hours ago
      > - 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 14 hours ago
  • mholm 16 hours ago
    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 15 hours ago
    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.
  • getflourish 13 hours ago
    Inspiring. So cool, yet useful.
  • o11c 14 hours ago
    Honestly, just `:set cursorcolumn` is far more useful. Less distractions at the moment of change, but still visible if you alt-tab back.
  • dangoodmanUT 14 hours ago
    i swear to god i can hear the laser sounds
  • incognito124 13 hours ago
    Love to see another atuin user
  • hello_computer 13 hours ago
    [dead]