Bug 294654

Summary:	Hide mouse cursor when you don't need it, to prevent it from getting in the way !
Product:	[I don't know] kde	Reporter:	Andrei ILIE <andrei.ilie>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Unassigned bugs mailing-list <unassigned-bugs>
Status:	RESOLVED UPSTREAM
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	cfeck
Priority:	NOR
Version:	4.6
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Fedora RPMs
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Andrei ILIE 2012-02-23 01:50:35 UTC

Version:           4.6 (using KDE 4.6.5) 
OS:                Linux

I reported this to "general", maybe it's a KWIN thing, I don't now...

  Please give the user an option to hide the mouse cursor when it's not needed, to prevent it from getting in the way when making simple activities like watching videos, reading, developing software, etc.

  There's already an X app that does exactly that, http://linuxappfinder.com/package/unclutter, but come on, I already have KDE installed ! Don't want another app for this simple feature.

  So, I propose the following implementation: in "System Settings / Mouse / Advanced" would be very useful to have something like "Hide mouse cursor if idle for more than N seconds". You, then, only have to move / click the mouse to make it visible again.

  As a sane default, not to scare KDE's conservative users, the default value of N could be "unlimited" for never to hide the mouse cursor.

The feature request presented above has a GLOBAL KDE SCOPE (it covers all apps opened while logged in KDE). As a result, fixing this, would also fix the following narrower scoped reports:
  https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=128026
  https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=251905
  https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=128501


Reproducible: Didn't try

Steps to Reproduce:
Details on how to reproduce the problem were not provided.


Expected Results:  
Expected results were not provided.

Comment 1 Christoph Feck 2012-02-26 18:57:55 UTC

> GLOBAL KDE SCOPE

So you do not want it to work with e.g. Firefox? This should most certainly be resolved at the X server level.

Comment 2 Andrei ILIE 2012-02-26 21:18:57 UTC

(In reply to comment #1)
> > GLOBAL KDE SCOPE
> 
> So you do not want it to work with e.g. Firefox? This should most certainly be
> resolved at the X server level.

Well, by "GLOBAL KDE SCOPE" I meant that this Mouse-Hiding-Feature, I proposed, should be active throughout my Desktop Environment - all graphical apps, started while in KDE, are of course included.

Having to install that "unclutter" X app for having just this _ONE_ mouse feature is an overkill.

A much more logical and elegant solution would be to simply provide the user with acces to this mouse feature via "System Settings / Mouse / Advanced" window.

Comment 3 Andrei ILIE 2012-02-26 21:34:59 UTC

"VLC media player" has this mouse-hiding-after-X-seconds-idle thing very well implemented, and as far as I now VLC is OSS using C++ and Qt...


An example where this mouse hiding feature would be very appreciated:

Don't have Adobe Flash Player installed, so I watch youTube via Firefox & HTML5. As a consequence, when playing fullscreen videos, the mouse _NEVER_ dissapears; it just stays on top of the video, wich is - as you can imagine - kind of annoying...

Comment 4 Christoph Feck 2012-05-19 02:28:44 UTC

I still believe this should be implemented inside the X server. Having a separate application that constantly needs to watch mouse and/or keyboard events, just to decide if the cursor should be hidden or revealed, is a waste of system resources.

Please report this to X11 developers if you want to work it globally, not just inside specific applications.