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#1 2026-03-11 22:24:50
- TheMohawkNinja
- Member
- Registered: 2017-07-11
- Posts: 47
[i3 on X11] Cursor keeps changing to crosshair
Hello,
Over the past few days to a week, my cursor keeps forcing itself from the default arrow/text cursor to a crosshair unless I double-click to get the default cursor back for only a second before it reverts back to a crosshair. Since the crosshair cursor does not seem to be able to interact with UI controls, I effectively have to triple-click to do ANYTHING in a web browser, which is quite annoying.
Current troubleshooting steps attempted:
- Rebooting computer
- Running `read` command to see if some key was being pressed (no output from `read` when attempted)
- Adding `xsetroot -cursor_name left_ptr` to my .xinitrc
- Checked /var/log/Xorg.0.log, but the last entry says that the server terminated successfully, so that sees useless
No idea what's going on. I can't even find a single forum thread anywhere on the Internet that mentions a similar problem.
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#2 2026-03-11 22:31:37
- seth
- Member
- From: Won't reply 2 private help req
- Registered: 2012-09-03
- Posts: 74,664
Re: [i3 on X11] Cursor keeps changing to crosshair
Since the crosshair cursor does not seem to be able to interact with UI controls
Probably some script running xwininfo/xprop ?
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#3 2026-03-11 22:35:30
- TheMohawkNinja
- Member
- Registered: 2017-07-11
- Posts: 47
Re: [i3 on X11] Cursor keeps changing to crosshair
Since the crosshair cursor does not seem to be able to interact with UI controls
Probably some script running xwininfo/xprop ?
There is, but it's been running for years and has never been a problem. I haven't made any changes to said script for at least a year as well, so that would seem unlikely unless xwininfo or xprop made some change recently that I am unaware of.
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#4 2026-03-11 22:52:35
- seth
- Member
- From: Won't reply 2 private help req
- Registered: 2012-09-03
- Posts: 74,664
Re: [i3 on X11] Cursor keeps changing to crosshair
Well, stop the script - does the behavior disappear?
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#5 2026-03-11 23:02:50
- TheMohawkNinja
- Member
- Registered: 2017-07-11
- Posts: 47
Re: [i3 on X11] Cursor keeps changing to crosshair
Well, stop the script - does the behavior disappear?
It does... and stranger still the solution persisted after reboot. How strange.
Something something "cache" probably.
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#6 2026-03-12 07:39:39
- seth
- Member
- From: Won't reply 2 private help req
- Registered: 2012-09-03
- Posts: 74,664
Re: [i3 on X11] Cursor keeps changing to crosshair
Feel free to post the script for a review - there's probably some uncaught condition that can lead to recursions or so.
In any event and please always remember to mark resolved threads by editing your initial posts subject - so others will know that there's no task left, but maybe a solution to find.
Thanks.
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