Multiple Mouse Cursors in Wayland
A developer is exploring the technical feasibility of using multiple mouse cursors on a single Linux desktop environment using Wayland. The post invites collaboration on 'multi-seat' input support to enable shared computer usage.
Why it matters
This research pushes the boundaries of human-computer interaction and desktop accessibility, potentially enabling new collaborative computing workflows.
I’ve been fascinated by the idea of attaching multiple mice to one computer, and then having multiple mouse cursors inside of one desktop environment!
I just spent three weeks investigating how well that’s currently supported on Linux & Wayland. Let me tell you what I found! The results are surprisingly cool.
Together with this blog post, I’m publishing a number of little tools and patched libraries that add or improve “multi-seat” support. But many pieces in this puzzle are still incomplete or missing. I marked some “open projects ideas” with a 📝 emoji throughout the blog post. By publishing this post, I hope to find people who are interested in exploring and expanding this space together. If that’s you, reach out!
(Yes, my default mouse cursor is a turtle. )
I admit that this is a somewhat esoteric way of using computers. But hear me out:
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