Cursor Settings

Complete guide to cursor customization, trail effects, and click animations in EasySpecy.

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Overview

EasySpecy provides professional cursor customization with two independent systems:

1. Cursor Packs — Replace your system cursor with custom designs during recording
2. Cursor Trails — Render smooth, animated trails behind the cursor in post-processing

Both systems can be used simultaneously or independently.

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Cursor Packs

Cursor packs replace your Windows system cursor with custom .cur files during recording. The original cursor is automatically restored when recording stops.

Available Packs

Pack	Description	Author
System Default	No change — uses your Windows cursor	Windows
macOS	Apple's cursor with shadow — clean and iconic	Community
Posy's Improved	Crisp black with white border — the internet's favorite	Michiel de Boer
Specy Classic	Clean capture layout with green accents	EasySpecy
Specy's Glasses	Glassmorphic body with glowing indicators and holographic rings	EasySpecy

How Packs Work

Each pack contains 10 cursor types:

• Arrow (normal pointer)
• I-Beam (text selection)
• Hand (links)
• Cross (precision)
• Size We/Ns/NwSe/NeSw (resize handles)
• Size All (move)
• No (forbidden)

During recording, EasySpecy calls SetSystemCursor to replace all cursor types. When recording stops, SystemParametersInfo(SPI_SETCURSORS) restores the original cursors.

Configuration

# In config.toml
cursor_pack = "default"  # default, macos, posy, specy_classic, easyspecy

Custom Packs

Create your own cursor pack:

1. Create a folder in %APPDATA%\easyspecy\cursors\your-pack-name\

2. Add .cur files with these names (any subset):

   • arrow.cur, normal.cur, or default.cur (required)
   • ibeam.cur, text.cur, beam.cur
   • hand.cur, link.cur
   • cross.cur
   • sizewe.cur
   • sizens.cur
   • sizenwse.cur
   • sizenesw.cur
   • sizeall.cur, move.cur
   • no.cur, forbidden.cur

3. EasySpecy will automatically detect the pack and list it in settings

Platform Support

Cursor packs are Windows-only. The pack system uses SetSystemCursor from the Windows API, which is not available on macOS or Linux.

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Cursor Trails

Cursor trails render a smooth, animated vector path behind the cursor position. Trails are rendered live and in real-time inside the transparent, click-through Tauri overlay window (effects-overlay), and are recorded directly into the output video by the Windows Graphics Capture (WGC) loop. This real-time approach minimizes post-processing latency and ensures the video is ready immediately on stop.

Trail Styles

Style	Description	Visual
Glow	Soft glow around cursor path with fading opacity	Luminous, subtle
Particles	Stream of glowing particles decaying over time	Magical, energetic
Ribbon	Sleek solid line with custom dash styling	Modern, clean
Dots	Discrete circular nodes connecting recent positions	Minimal, precise
Aurora	Color-cycling fluid wave following cursor movement	Vibrant, organic

Trail Rendering Architecture

Trails are rendered on screen at 60 FPS using an event-driven HTML5 <canvas> inside overlay.html:

The loop operates in three steps:

1. Poll: During recording, a background Rust mouse listener thread polls Windows cursor coordinates at ~60Hz and detects clicks.
2. Broadcast: The coordinates are instantly broadcast as Tauri IPC events (cursor-move, cursor-click) to the overlay window.
3. Interpolate & Render: The Canvas script receives coordinates and applies real-time Catmull-Rom spline interpolation between samples to ensure a smooth, gap-free trail at the display's native refresh rate, completely eliminating frame latency.

Configuration

# Enable trails
cursor_trail_enabled = true

# Trail appearance
trail_style = "glow"              # glow, particles, ribbon, dots, aurora, none
cursor_trail_color = "#00ff88"    # Primary color (glow, ribbon, particles start)
cursor_secondary_color = "#ff4488" # Secondary color (right-clicks, aurora cycles)

Trail Colors

• Glow / Ribbon: Draws a path with cursor_trail_color, fading out in opacity.
• Particles / Dots: Decays from cursor_trail_color to transparent.
• Aurora: Cycles colors dynamically starting from cursor_trail_color and using cursor_secondary_color for gradients.

Smoothing

Smoothing uses a real-time Catmull-Rom spline interpolation algorithm. It ensures that even during fast mouse movements across the screen, the trail renders as a continuous, elegant curve without breaks or jagged vertices.

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Click Effects

Click effects render an animation at the cursor position live on the screen when you click.

Available Effects

Effect	Description
Ripple	Expanding concentric circles fading out (default)
Spotlight	Translucent radial gradient focusing on click
Ring	Sleek singular expanding ring
Pulse	Quick scale-up and rhythmic vibration
Confetti	Burst of multi-colored falling physics particles
None	No click effect

Configuration

click_effect = "ripple"  # ripple, spotlight, ring, pulse, confetti, none

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Performance Impact

During Recording

• Cursor Overlay: Hardware-accelerated Webview canvas rendering uses <1% CPU and negligible GPU.
• Mouse Hook Polling: Lock-free atomic coordinate checking runs in a low-priority thread, consuming <0.1% CPU.
• Total Overhead: Practically unnoticeable, keeping your computer's resources free for screen capture and encoding.

Post-Processing

• Trail rendering overhead: Zero. Since all effects are composited live and burned-in by WGC, there is no rendering or encoding of trails during the post-processing phase.

Optimization Tips

• For lower-end GPUs, choose simpler trail styles like Dots or Ribbon rather than physics-intensive ones like Particles.
• Disable trails entirely (cursor_trail_enabled = false) if you prefer a clean desktop recording.

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Troubleshooting

Trail has gaps or appears jagged

• Enable cursor_smoothing = true
• Increase capture FPS (higher sample rate = smoother path)
• Check if another app is modifying cursor position

Cursor pack not applying

• Verify you're on Windows (packs are Windows-only)
• Check %APPDATA%\easyspecy\logs\easyspecy.log for errors
• Ensure .cur files are valid Windows cursor files

Cursor not restored after recording

• EasySpecy automatically restores on stop
• If recording crashes, restart EasySpecy to restore cursors
• Manual restore: SystemParametersInfo(SPI_SETCURSORS) via PowerShell

Rainbow trail looks wrong

• Verify both cursor_trail_color and cursor_secondary_color are set
• Use hex format: #RRGGBB

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Advanced: Trail Rendering Pipeline

For developers interested in the implementation:

// 1. Collect cursor samples during recording
struct CursorSample {
    x: f32,
    y: f32,
    timestamp_ms: f64,
    click: Option<ClickType>, // Left, Right, Double
}

// 2. Post-recording: pre-smooth entire path
let smoothed = catmull_rom_spline(&samples, interpolation_factor);

// 3. Pre-compute trail segments in parallel
let segments: Vec<TrailSegment> = smoothed.par_iter()
    .map(|sample| compute_trail_segment(sample, config))
    .collect();

// 4. Batch-render frames (2x CPU cores)
let batches: Vec<_> = frames.chunks(num_cores * 2).collect();
batches.par_iter().for_each(|batch| {
    for frame in batch {
        render_trail_onto_frame(frame, &segments, config);
    }
});

// 5. Pipe to FFmpeg in order
Command::new(ffmpeg)
    .args(["-i", "frames/%06d.png", "-c:v", "libx264", "output.mp4"])
    .output()?;

The trail system is designed for maximum quality with minimum impact on recording performance. All heavy computation happens after recording stops.