Change cursor theme/size on COSMIC

How to change your cursor size and/or theme on the COSMIC desktop environment

If you are reading this in the future, this guide was written before there was a way to configure the cursor theme and size via a graphical interface in COSMIC. This guide may seem quite long but rest assured it is quite simple and it has only been made this long so that new users are able to (hopefully) understand it.

This may not work for XWayland apps.

Most of this will be done via a GUI for ease of understanding at the expense of speed.

Terminology:

~ is shorthand for your home folder aka /home/[user]

Instructions for cursor theme

Step 1: Download the cursor theme you would like to apply, these are usually distributed in zip/targz files. I will use bibata-modern-classic for this demonstration.

Step 2: Extract the compressed file. This can be done by opening COSMIC files, navigating to where you saved your cursor theme, right clicking on it and clicking extract.

Step 3: Navigate to the folder containing the cursor theme files in the contents of the extracted cursor theme. If unsure, this means the folder containing a file called cursor.theme.

Step 3.5 (optional): If there are multiple variations of the cursor theme included in the archive, find out which folder contains your preferred cursor theme and use that.

Step 4: Open COSMIC files. Navigate to the folder ~/.local/share. If you are unable to see it, you may need to click on View -> Show Hidden Files in the header bar.

Step 5: In that folder, navigate to the folder called icons. If it does not exist, create it. Note that it is important that it is all lowercase, otherwise it will not be recognised. Linux is case-sensitive (which is why you can have two files called dingus.txt and Dingus.txt in the same folder!)

Step 6: Copy the folder that contains the cursor theme (which you identified in step 3) into the folder ~/.local/share/icons. The folder structure should look like ~/.local/share/icons/Bibata-Modern-Classic/, with the last folder in that path being the one from step 3.

For Flatpak applications:

Step 1: Download an application called Flatseal. This can be done by opening the COSMIC Store, waiting for flatpak applications to load (you can tell it's done when the loading indicator in the top right of the application disappears) and searching for Flatseal. The correct application should look like the one in the screenshot. Click on install.

More information about Flatseal This application is used to configure what permissions flatpak applications are allowed to have. If unaware, flatpak applications are sandboxed. For more information about linux packaging formats, I encourage you to watch a ExplainingComputers video [link here]

Step 2: Open Flatseal and click on All Applications at the top of the left column.

Step 3: Scroll down until you see Filesystem. In the section "Other files", click on the folder icon with a plus. This should create an empty entry in the list.

Step 4: Paste this into the empty row you just created ~/.local/share/icons:ro

Step 5: Scroll down further until you find environment variables. Click on the plus button. This should create an empty entry similar to before.

Step 6: Add XCURSOR_THEME=Bibata-Modern-Classic to that empty row.

For regular applications:

Step 1: Open the terminal and enter sudo nano /etc/environment. This will prompt you for your password. There is no indicator for how many letters you have typed.

Step 2: Add a new line to this file containing the same environment variable you added in Flatseal, so XCURSOR_THEME=Bibata-Modern-Classic

Step 3: To save your changes, press Control+O then Enter. To exit, press Control+X

You will need to reboot your system to apply these changes.

Instructions for cursor size

For Flatpak applications:

Step 1: Download an application called Flatseal. This can be done by opening the COSMIC Store, waiting for flatpak applications to load (you can tell it's done when the loading indicator in the top right of the application disappears) and searching for Flatseal. The correct application should look like the one in the screenshot. Click on install.

More information about Flatseal This application is used to configure what permissions flatpak applications are allowed to have. If unaware, flatpak applications are sandboxed. For more information about linux packaging formats, I encourage you to watch a ExplainingComputers video [link here]

Step 2: Open Flatseal and click on All Applications at the top of the left column.

Step 3: Scroll down until you find Environment Variables. Click on the plus button. This should create an empty entry similar to before.

Step 4: Add XCURSOR_SIZE=24 to that empty row. Note that this can be any number but it is best to use multiples of 8 so 16, 24, 32 etc.

For regular applications:

Step 1: Open the terminal and enter sudo nano /etc/environment. This will prompt you for your password. There is no indicator for how many letters you have typed.

Step 2: Add a new line to this file containing the same environment variable you added in Flatseal, so XCURSOR_THEME=24. Again this can be any number but it is best to use multiples of 8.

Step 3: To save your changes, press Control+O then Enter. To exit, press Control+X

You will need to reboot your system to apply these changes.