Fix inconsistent mouse cursors in Linux Mint

I love Linux Mint but a frustration of mine is the fact that the mouse cursors are inconsistent. If you change the mouse theme in the themes settings it will change for most windows, but certain windows such as chrome or wine revert to the system default mouse cursor.

I’ve finally found a fix courtesy of Ubuntu Forums. The problem lies with the x-cursor-theme being independent of the theme set in cinnamon. What you have to do is run a command to update the x-cursor-theme.

First, find the name of the mouse cursor you want from a list of your installed themes:

ls /usr/share/icons

Set an environment variable of the theme you want. Specify the folder name of the theme. For example, for DMZ-Black cursor:

CURSOR=DMZ-Black

Lastly run the command to update your cursor:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-theme "$CURSOR" && sudo update-alternatives --set x-cursor-theme /usr/share/icons/$CURSOR/cursor.theme

That’s it! You now have consistent mouse cursors. OCD demons satisfied.

6 thoughts on “Fix inconsistent mouse cursors in Linux Mint”

  1. It doesn’t work to me, also I cannot set the SIZE of the cursor, I would love to have 48 but on programs it’s 48 on desktop 24.
    What can it be?

    1. I think the disconnect is between gnome theme settings and cinnamon settings. You can try playing around with getting things the way you like them in GNOME and then booting back into cinnamon to see if the change sticks there.

  2. I’m not sure what this article is referring to but the problem I’ve been having lately in Cinnamon is that the cursor keeps jumping all over the place…as I’m typing, it’ll suddenly jump back a few letters, which is more frustrating than I can say.

    I don’t recall when this began happening, but it was sometime earlier this year (even typing this reply is frustrating) and I’ve been unable to find any solutions (or even causes).

  3. Sorry but in Linux Mint 18.2 Xfce x64 Sonya I get this error in the terminal: update-alternatives: error: alternative /usr/share/icons/oxy-zion/cursor.theme for x-cursor-theme not registered; not setting

  4. if you have manually installed cursor theme, you need to add that to /var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/x-cursor-theme (just look in, you will figure it out)
    And then
    sudo update-alternatives –config x-cursor-theme
    But this affects all users on your system.

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