xtrail is a lightweight program designed to render trails behind the mouse cursor on X11-based systems. This doesn't require a compositor (but highly recommended for some programs) and utilizes dithering for rendering with a minimalistic 1-bit "transparency" depth.
- Renders trails behind the mouse cursor with multiple render types.
- Supports customizable trail length and thickness.
- Adjustable mouse position history count.
- Configurable refresh rates for both rendering and mouse tracking.
- Trail is hidden when cursor is invisible (e.g., gaming)
To build xtrail, simply use the provided Makefile by running make or sudo make install:
git clone https://github.com/algj/xtrail.git
cd xtrail
sudo make install
# try it out
xtrail --trail --color 0x7F7F7F
# to uninstall xtrail:
sudo make uninstallOnce built, you can run xtrail with various options:
Usage: xtrail [OPTIONS]
Options:
--help Display this help message
--trail-length <length> Set trail length to <length>
--trail-thickness <px> Set trail thickness to <px>
--color <hex> Set color to <hex> (e.g. 0x7F7F7F)
--mouse-hcount <count> Set position history count to <count>
--refresh-rate <fps> Set refresh rate count to <fps>
--mouse-refresh-rate <hz> Set mouse refresh rate count to <hz> (e.g. 240.00)
--no-dither Disable dithering
--mouse-share-thread Synchronous rendering and mouse pooling
--mouse-smooth-factor <val> Adjusts the smoothness of mouse movements (e.g. 0 or 2)
--mouse-empty-area <px> Sets area around mouse which is not obfuscated by trails
Render type options:
--trail Render "trail" type
--dots Render "dots" type
xtrail is licensed under the BSD 2-Clause License. See the LICENSE file for more details.
This project is provided as-is and may not receive regular updates or extensive support. Use it at your own discretion. Expect high CPU usage when running this.