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I've seen videos like this one in which a effect appears when the user made a click. What I want it's just the effect only, I don't care the colour of the cursor.

How can I make this effect when I do a click in Ubuntu 11.10?

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    the video link is broken, that video is no more available
    – nulll
    Sep 15, 2022 at 11:02

6 Answers 6

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As indicated in this very similar question, your best option appears to be using keymon; it is fairly easy to customize it for an effect similar to what you see in your video.

1. Install keymon

From the Software Center, or via sudo apt-get install key-mon

2. Make its window minimal and enable the click indicator

  • The default window shows mouse and keyboard status, like:

    enter image description here

  • Unless you want it, let's get rid of all these; right-click on it window, and chose Settings:. Then, uncheck everything under Buttons:

    enter image description here

  • and set up the Misc tab as:

    enter image description here

  • This leaves you with a minimal status window:

enter image description here

  • And the default click-indicator, which you don't like very much :)

    enter image description here

3. Customizing the mouse-click indicator and making the KeyMon window disappear

  • First, let's make the keymon window disappear. Simply run it from the terminal (you can set up a launcher, script or startup too) as:

    key-mon --scale=0.1

  • Next, the files we need to modify are in /usr/shared/pyshared/keymon, so cd to that folder.

  • Make the click-indicator bolder: in shaped_window.py, find win.set_opacity(0.5) around line 58 and change the 0.5 to 1.0

  • Increase the fade-out time: at the end of shaped_window.py, find gobject.timeout_add(200, self.hide) and change the 200 to e.g. 750 (it's in milliseconds)

  • Change the indicator: The indicators are simply SVG files, under themes/*/mouse-indicator.svg; you can edit these with Inkscape, etc. to customize it to whatever you want to be.

    • To get you started, I've created a red square like the one in your video. To "install it", just make sure keymon is not running, and download it this way (SVGs are just text files):
    sudo wget http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=rBnUiXWh -O/usr/share/pyshared/keymon/themes/classic/mouse-indicator.svg

  • Now start keymon, and you'll see a nice red fading-out indicator like the one in your video around the cursor whenever you click/drag:

    enter image description here

Youtube Video Demo

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  • Thanks, now I'll modify the source and make *.svg files to customize. I also want to design an animation, not only an static image. Do you think there I can do this with a *.svg file or not? Do you know some program that can help me with this?
    – Lucio
    Aug 16, 2012 at 23:43
  • In general, you can use inkscape to create and edit SVG files. As for an animation, the simplest, if you can do with a small number of animation steps, may be to just modify shaped_window.py to quickly show, hide and show the appropriate SVGs, in sequence. BTW, please also consider awarding the bounty as it will be gone forever in a few hours...thanks.
    – ish
    Aug 17, 2012 at 10:38
  • for quantal the package 1.13 is broken; a working package I found here, was a bit tricky to find..
    – Aquarius Power
    Dec 28, 2013 at 6:36
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You can install key-mon which apart from showing the mouse clicks,can also show key presses.For locating the mouse-pointer you have to run the command:

key-mon --visible_click
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  • The program is really interesting, it doesn't have the effect there I want but maybe modifying its source can do something similar.
    – Lucio
    Aug 16, 2012 at 0:36
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    You can get the source code from here
    – ignite
    Aug 16, 2012 at 7:58
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For Ubuntu 20.04, I found the solution here

These are the commands listed in the video:

$sudo add-apt-repository  ppa:nrbrtx/python2-stuff

$sudo apt-get update

$sudo apt-get install key-mon

and then you can check the option "Highly Visible Click "

setting in key-mon

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  • 1
    Since August 2020, key-mon has been upgraded to python3, so you can use python3 pip to do pip install key-mon again (requires python3-xlib package to run).
    – hsandt
    Mar 16, 2023 at 17:59
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You can achieve a similar thing with the Water effect in Compiz.

First watch a video about it (grabbed it on youtube): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pcLv8XuGKM The results on the video may look like that it's not what you want, but you can change the settings later after you had enabled it.

Then definitely read What are some of the issues with ccsm and why should I not use it?

Then start.

First, install Compiz-Config by searching it in the Software center.

enter image description here

Then, open the program by searching CompizConfig Settings Manager.

enter image description here

Search for Water Effect and select the option

enter image description here

Enable the effect, set a custom shortcut by clicking the option on Initiate, then click on the shortcut that you assigned, then have fun!

The effects might not be the one you wanted, so fool around with the 2 sliders until you like what you saw.

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  • 1
    The water effect lacks the option to be initiated by mouse input, am I right? If so, that wouldn't answer the question.
    – FuzzyQ
    Aug 10, 2012 at 12:11
  • @Lucio You might want to try adding some more details in the question. Your title says you want a click effect, and here you say you don't want a click effect.
    – belacqua
    Aug 10, 2012 at 19:17
  • @belacqua "here you say you don't want a click effect" Where? I say that this effect is produced by the movement of the mouse, not by the click
    – Lucio
    Aug 10, 2012 at 22:09
  • @Lucio Perhaps I was misinterpreting your sentence "it isn't a click effect but a pointer effect". I'm not being critical for the sake of it ; I'm trying to make sure your question is understandable and therefore answerable.
    – belacqua
    Aug 13, 2012 at 20:03
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    water effect is not there in Ubuntu 20.4
    – Mariam
    Jan 12, 2021 at 20:35
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Without having to install anything, the only option is to enable "Show position of pointer when Ctrl is pressed"

  1. Go to System Settings > Mouse and Touchpad
  2. Check the box that says: "Show position of pointer when Control key is pressed"
  3. Done.

Press Ctrl and an orange radiating circle should show the position of the pointer.

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  • 5
    Your answer is very complicated and the effect isn't enabled by the click.
    – Lucio
    Jul 30, 2012 at 20:04
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    That's correct, the effect isn't enabled by the click. You need to press the Control Key Ctrl on the keyboard, which should produce an orange radiating circle to show the position of the pointer. It's not ideal, I know, but it will get the job done if you needed it.
    – Gerard Roche
    Jul 31, 2012 at 6:26
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    Is not a necessity, is just a visual effect there I want. Thanks for you tip but my question remains unanswered. I want the effect by the click, avoiding push the Ctrl key all the time.
    – Lucio
    Jul 31, 2012 at 22:20
  • There's no such option in Ubuntu 20
    – Danil
    Nov 8, 2020 at 21:07
  • For those who couldn't make it work after enabling this setting. First press Ctrl only (do not click at the same time), wait for 1s and then you'll see the effect. It's good to "pretend" a click with effect.
    – testing_22
    Feb 25, 2023 at 15:46
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On KDE Plasma 5.18 LTS / Kubuntu 20.04 LTS it's built in, no extra software installation needed

Desktop Effect settings, click animation effect

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