Animated Cursor - Obsdian Plugin

Give your cursor a simple, yet smooth, move animation. Inspired by Microsoft Office and VSCode smooth cursor.

Warning

Read caveat section below before installing this plugin!

🚀 Features

• Move and blink animation for the cursor.
• Work on both hovering page preview and canvas.
• Support multi-cursor.
• Adjustable cursor speed and blink duration (via Style Settings plugin).

🎨 What makes it different?

• Works as native cursor. This plugin patch existing Obsidian cursor, avoiding any unintended calculations. The same plugin before creates another cursor instance, yet still let Obsidian calculate its own cursor.
• Hardly relies on CodeMirror API. It's the secret of the consistency of the cursor behavior. Thus, it doesn't face any meaningful problems with multi-cursor, canvas, etc.

📦 Installation

• Manual
  • Create a folder named animated-cursor under YOUR_VAULT_NAME/.obsidian/plugins.
  • Place manifest.json, main.js, and style.css from the latest release into the folder.
  • Enable it through the "Community plugin" setting tab.
• In-app
  • Open settings.
  • Choose "Community plugins" setting tab.
  • Turn off "Restricted mode" if it was enabled before.
  • Click "Browse" at "Community plugins" item.
  • Type "Animated Cursor" in the search box.
  • Install and enable it.
• Using BRAT.

✍️ Usage

Simply move the cursor by pressing arrow keys, clicking or dragging using your mouse. The cursor will stop blinking while it's moving.

⚙️ Adjustment

Via Style Settings plugin you can:

• adjust the cursor speed in miliseconds,
• adjust the blink rate in miliseconds,
• set the blink count in a sequence,
• toggle infinity blinking.

Additionally, in the "Animated Cursor" plugin settings, you have an option to make the cursor move slightly more smoothly:

• If turned on, move transition uses transform property, but the cursor seems to appear blurry.
• If turned off, it uses top and left properties.

Note

You can disable the blink by adjust the blink count to zero.

⚠️ Caveat

Because this plugin uses DOM to draw the cursor, it could -probably- cost expensive performance due to frequently layout recomputation, especially when you repeatedly move the cursor.

🐞 Known Bugs

• Buggy multi-cursors on the table.
• Flicker/jitter effect occurs when the cursor is continously moved by holding the arrow keys.
• Weird behavior when move the cursor outside the table.

Feel free to let me know if you find any bugs...

©️ Attribution

This plugin includes some of the source codes developed by Marijnh Haverbeke and the others at CodeMirror, with some modifications. All their works are licensed under MIT.

🙏 Acknowledgment

Thanks to:

• VSCode for the smooth cursor concept.
• CodeMirror, Marijnh, and its community.