Mouse cursor disappears momentarily when moving over certain elements

[juj]

It looks like whenever the mouse cursor moves across elements on the screen which have a different mouse cursor icon associated with them, the mouse cursor disappears. Also on some title elements, and especially when mouse hover tooltip elements in the menus are involved, the mouse cursor keeps disappearing. This happens quite often and causes noticeable flickering when moving the mouse, and in some HTML pages, it is difficult to precisely choose elements from small links, when the mouse cursor is hidden whenever moving the cursor only a few pixels.

Here are two videos showing the issue:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/40949268/Bugs/raspbian_mouse_flicker_1.MOV
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/40949268/Bugs/raspbian_mouse_flicker_2.MOV

[Vivian (vivian-unger)]

This happens to me too. I notice it particularly when hovering over links, tabs, and "close tab" icons. Interestingly in the case of the latter, the cursor does not disappear until the "Close tab" tooltip appears. So perhaps there is some sort of conflict between them.

This issue has been discussed on the forum: see https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=86135&p=778497 . A "fix" suggested in this discussion is to delete or rename /usr/share/icons/Adwaita. This does work, but is obviously kludgy and results in not being able to tell when the program you've selected is starting up, because the mouse cursor with the little wheel is gone.

I find it especially problematic when trying to select in GIMP. It's very difficult to select just what you want when your cursor is disappearing on you.

[Micha (m-st-w)]

Same here...pointer disappears when using mousewheel (wired mouse) in iceweasel for example.
Heavy flickering when using a wireless mouse...hopefully this will get fixed soon!

[ianb1469 (ian-broster)]

Just to note that this is still a pertinent issue and one that quite severely affects the usability and perceived quality/seriousness of Raspian/Pi/Linux.

This is a fundamental user-interface issue that makes it particularly difficult for people (especially school children) to use pi for anything serious because you have to "guess" where the pointer is when it's not a regular arrow.

Applications that are particularly unusable because of this bug include GIMP and other drawing programs.

[SinewaveMan (signatius)]

Seriously affects Tkinter which is used in Python GUI applications. Specifically, when a checkbox is clicked, the pointer (cursor) disappears until the mouse is moved away from the checkbox. If the mouse is not moved after a click, then the invisible pointer is still "aimed" at the checkbox because repeated clicks, without moving the mouse, will toggle the checkbox on and off.

[SinewaveMan (signatius)]

If anyone's interested, here is a link to the Raspberry Pi forum topic dealing with this problem:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=86135&sid=ed80a7761a0f71522e0271324f9b4b57&p=797238#p797238.

It seems to me it should not be a difficult problem to solve. I don't have enough experience or talent to patch the software myself, but the pseudo code would be "refresh pointer" after any mouse click (and possibly some other actions too).

Would someone please post a status report on this problem and its possible solution. Mainly, I would like to know if it is being addressed, and whether there is anything I/we can do to assist.

[peter green (plugwash)]

I might consider a targetted patch but I have no plans to actively investigate this.

[SinewaveMan (signatius)]

Thanks peter green, I look forward to your progress. Anything I can do to help please let me know.

[peter green (plugwash)]

Sorry If I wasn't clear in my previous post, I mean I may consider applying a targetted patch to fix this if someone supplies one but i'm not going to be doing the investigation/coding myself.

[B Scott Lovell (bscottlovell)]

I'm attempting to write an APRS client and this bug seriously effects the ability to pick an item on the map.