A lightweight cursor trail for macOS: a fading line or "ghost" copies of the pointer that follow your mouse.
| Ghosts | Line |
|---|---|
 |
 |
| Tinted ghosts | Animated rainbow |
 |
 |
- Two styles: a tapered gradient line, or faded copies of the cursor that shrink as they disappear.
- Time-based or fixed-size trails, with an optional inactivity timeout.
- Head-to-tail lists for width, opacity and size (e.g.
6,3,1), any number of colors with adjustable blending. - Ghost recoloring: keep the original colors, tint the inner fill only, the whole cursor, or one specific color.
- Extras: animated rainbow, minimum speed (trail only on fast flicks), 60/30 fps cap, X/Y offset.
- Global hotkey to toggle the trail (no Accessibility permission needed), with an on/off animation.
- Menu bar app with live settings window, launch at login, multi-monitor support.
- Low overhead: drawn with Core Animation layers, no full-screen redraws; it stops drawing when the mouse is still.
The settings UI is currently in Italian.
brew tap mdrzn/tap && brew trust mdrzn/tap # once: Homebrew asks you to trust third-party taps
brew install --cask --no-quarantine mdrzn/tap/cursortrail--no-quarantine skips the first-launch Gatekeeper block described below (CursorTrail isn't notarized). Update with brew upgrade --cask cursortrail.
- Download
CursorTrail.zipfrom the latest release and unzip it. - Move
CursorTrail.appto your Applications folder. - Open it. macOS will block it the first time (see below). Once allowed, an icon appears in the menu bar.
Works on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, macOS 14 or later.
CursorTrail is free and open source, but it is not notarized by Apple (that requires a paid Apple Developer account), so Gatekeeper blocks it the first time you open a downloaded copy. This does not mean the app is broken or harmful — you can read and build the source yourself (Option 2).
To allow it:
- Double-click
CursorTrail.app. When the warning appears, click Done (not "Move to Trash"). - Open System Settings → Privacy & Security.
- Scroll down to the Security section: you will see "CursorTrail was blocked to protect your Mac". Click Open Anyway.
- Confirm with your password or Touch ID, then click Open in the last dialog.
You only need to do this once. Alternatively, from Terminal:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/CursorTrail.appRequires macOS 14+ and the Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install); no Xcode project needed. A locally built app is not blocked by Gatekeeper.
git clone https://github.com/mdrzn/cursor-trail.git
cd cursor-trail
./build.sh # builds CursorTrail.app for this Mac
open CursorTrail.app # icon appears in the menu bar./build.sh --universal builds an Apple Silicon + Intel app and packs it into CursorTrail.zip.
The demo GIFs are generated by the app itself, off-screen, with the same rendering engine:
./make-gifs.sh # requires ffmpeg; writes docs/*.gif- macOS does not let other apps read the current cursor shape reliably, so ghost copies always use the arrow.
- The trail is drawn in an overlay just below the real cursor.
Made by mdrzn.
Inspired by the Cursor Trail mod for Windhawk by Ulrizza (MIT). CursorTrail is an independent reimplementation for macOS; default values follow the original mod.
MIT