How to change your cursor in Gnome 3

[Inoki]

What we will need:

- a desired cursor theme (can be obtained from either http://gnome-look.org or just about any website, like http://deviantart.com
- dconf-tools package from synaptic

How to do this:

1. Download your desired cursor theme and extract it to /usr/share/icons (you need root privileges to do that). The correct package needs to have an index.theme file inside.

2. Open up Gnome Tweak Tool, go to Theme's tab and change your cursor to the latest theme you downloaded.

3. Check the name of the cursor theme how it's displayed in Gnome Tweak Tool, make it match exactly as in system settings below in the index.theme of the cursor by opening it as root in the following location:

/usr/share/icons/default/index.theme

or using the command "sudo gedit /usr/share/icons/default/index.theme"

There should be a line labeled "Inherits" containing the name of the cursor theme. By default it's DMZ-White.

index.theme (-usr-share-icons-default) - gedit_003.png (30.87 KiB) Viewed 7713 times

4. Last step is checking in system settings. The package in order to access system settings is called "dconf-tools" in Synaptic Package Manager. Download and install it.

Synaptic - správca inštalačných balíkov _001.png (109.81 KiB) Viewed 7720 times

To launch it, use ALT + F2 and type in "dconf-editor" (without the quotes). Navigate to:

Configuration Editor_002.png (69.39 KiB) Viewed 7720 times

or ORG > GNOME > DESKTOP > INTERFACE

The name in system settings should be the same there and in the index.theme file. Which means in system settings I currently have "oxy-neon", the same needs to be in index.theme file in Inherits section.

5. Once done, logout and log back in to your session, or hit CTRL + ALT + BACKSPACE. Hope this helps.

[karashata]

Might I suggest something slightly easier..?

Follow the steps above for GNOME Tweak Tool, then stop. (ie. Do steps 1 and 2.)

Launch your favourite terminal emulator and run the following command:

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sudo update-alternatives --config x-cursor-theme

Enter the number for your desired cursor theme and hit Enter.

Debian and Ubuntu both use alternatives to configure many aspects of the system, and the X cursor theme is one such thing. You should not need to edit the default index.theme file directly to set the system-wide cursor theme, since it is a symlink to the alternatives file, which can be configured with the command I gave above.

[Inoki]

Might I suggest something slightly easier..?

Follow the steps above for GNOME Tweak Tool, then stop. (ie. Do steps 1 and 2.)

Launch your favourite terminal emulator and run the following command:

Code: Select all

sudo update-alternatives --config x-cursor-theme

Enter the number for your desired cursor theme and hit Enter.

Debian and Ubuntu both use alternatives to configure many aspects of the system, and the X cursor theme is one such thing. You should not need to edit the default index.theme file directly to set the system-wide cursor theme, since it is a symlink to the alternatives file, which can be configured with the command I gave above.

The method you proposed didn't show me the cursor I wanted to select. I currently use "oxy-neon", but it only gave me the option to choose between "DMZ-White" and "DMZ-Black".

[karashata]

Ah, I suppose that's true... There is a way to manually install the cursor theme into alternatives though so it can be selected from there:

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sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/share/icons/default/index.theme x-cursor-theme <path to cursor theme (in this case, /usr/share/icons/oxy-neon/index.theme) <priority (an integer, say, 50)>

After using that code, the cursor theme should show up in the alternatives list when running the command I gave you earlier, and you can manually set it there.

If you want more info into how update-alternatives works, you can always check out the man page with:

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man update-alternatives

[Inoki]

Thanks for the suggestion, I tried to do this the more "user friendly" way for those, who have little to no knowledge of Linux and coding. Since we are still left without properly working means of changing various aspects of the Gnome interface.

[ChickenPie4Tea]

I would like to know how you can just change one thing - in my case I dont want to change a whole cursor set just the busy animation. This was a piece of cake in windows but I dont know how in linux