Cursor reverts to default size and theme after login, when hovering over certain parts of the UI

[Rowan]

Dock, dash and top bar do not respect cursor size setting from "Settings" (gnome-control-center) straight after login.

Occurring in Ubuntu 18.04.1, on two machines.

Expected behaviour: cursor size set to medium (32px) or large (48px?) should remain consistent between windows, desktop and dock/dash/top bar.

Observed behaviour: cursor shrinks to default (24px) when hovering over dock/dash/top bar. If the cursor state changes (e.g. to loading spin wheel) the cursor fixes itself.

Not sure whether it is a bug in GNOME or the shell extension.

Sizes set using "gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-size 32" and "gsettings set com.ubuntu.user-interface.desktop cursor-size 32" exhibit the same behaviour.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: gnome-shell-extension-ubuntu-dock 0.9.1ubuntu18.04.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-33.36-generic 4.15.18
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-33-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.2
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Thu Aug 30 23:45:14 2018
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-08-24 (5 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release amd64 (20180725)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: gnome-shell-extension-ubuntu-dock
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Andrea Fernandes da Fonseca (andreafdaf)]

I'm having almost the same issue, I'm using a custom mouse theme and a custom size and the mouse cursor resets to default theme and size when:
- hovering over desktop
- hovering over a window top bar
- hovering over "core" applications like nautilus or settings

As OP says, also in my case only the "pointer" state of the cursor is affected by this transformation, any other state is rendered properly anywhere.

$ apt list --installed | grep ^gnome-shell
gnome-shell/bionic-updates,now 3.28.3-0ubuntu0.18.04.2 amd64 [installed]
gnome-shell-common/bionic-updates,bionic-updates,now 3.28.3-0ubuntu0.18.04.2 all [installed,automatic]
gnome-shell-extension-appindicator/bionic,bionic,now 18.04.1 all [installed,automatic]
gnome-shell-extension-ubuntu-dock/bionic-updates,bionic-updates,now 0.9.1ubuntu18.04.1 all [installed,automatic]

$ uname -r
4.15.0-32-generic

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 1700085, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.

[Luca De Luigi (lykius)]

I believe it's incorrect to mark this bug as a duplicate of bug #1700085.
In fact, in bug #1700085, the user puts a lot of effort to get hidpi scaling and, even if he succeds in that, he is not able to make the cursor scale as well. So, the cursor doesn't scale at all.

Concerning this bug (which affects me literally in the same way), gnome is scaling everything automatically, no action is needed and everything looks beautiful out of the box. The only (small) problem is that, immediately after login, if you move the cursor over the top or the left bars, its size go back to the default and it becomes very small. So, while the cursor is on the desktop the size is scaled properly, as soon as you move on the bars, it goes back to the default size.
As soon as you click on something that triggers the cursor to switch to the "wait circle" (for instance, Firefox or any other application), some magic happens and the cursor size is scaled properly even on the top and left bars.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 18.04 (bionic) reached end-of-standard-support on May 31, 2023.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

We appreciate that this bug may be old and you might not be interested in discussing it anymore. But if you are then please upgrade to the latest Ubuntu version and re-test. If you then find the bug is still present in the newer Ubuntu version, please add a comment here telling us which new version it is in.