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Comment by bee_rider | Hacker News Reader

Ghost was possible on the desktop as well, IIRC. I wonder if it was intended as an accessibility feature or for new users who had trouble keeping track of the mouse.

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Yup. I am glad we've moved on, at least on windows, to double-tapping left ctrl to highlight the cursor. It's a pleasant effect.

macOS's shake-the-mouse gesture isn't as nice. It's such a "violent" gesture that it feels like it will just reinforce the feeling of frustration for users.

macOS's is discoverable by the very action one might take trying to find the cursor even without knowing about it, while Windows' isn't. Source: I found the macOS one by accident, but didn't know about the Windows double-tap-ctrl thing until reading your post. Most likely I'll forget the ctrl trick by tomorrow, but shake-the-mouse was stuck in my brain the instant I found it.

Note that left ctrl trick is still just a PowerToy in Windows. That's one I'm surprised hasn't graduated to in box given its general usefulness for accessibility and overall simplicity.

It's built into "Mouse Properties" in the standard settings dialog on this Win11 box.

Oh dang. Thanks, I didn't realize that.

Exploring mouse options for something else and stumbled upon a reminder there is an in box feature for it. It's off-by-default and the changes that Power Tool makes are: switch from single Left Ctrl to double Left Ctrl, and switches from classic Windows "wave of rings" visual (it expands a bunch of rings out from the pointer as a very simple animation) to the "Spotlight" mechanic that dims the screen except for a circle around the pointer.

I don't really like the idea of double-tapping control either, for much the same reason, but wiggling the mouse seems gentler. I still use trails, though; I'll take all the help I can get.

Or maybe it's useful for when you do get frustrated and can't find the mouse cursor :)

I used to wonder the same then one day I tried LSD[0], and it was another illumination. By then, I'm sure the origin of the cursor trail was some trippy programmer trying to recreate the same effect he saw "under the influence".

[0]: I swear, just once!

A different form of cursor ghosting would occur when certain GUI programs got stuck. So it might just be that somebody saw that and thought it was neat.

A Ghost/Trailing effect is still available on Windows under Accessibility.

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