this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2024
237 points (98.0% liked)

Asklemmy

43891 readers
777 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

FOSS or otherwise

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 51 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (15 children)

On Android, it's probably a little utility software called Quick Cursor (it's not FOSS). It's incredibly convenient being able to spawn a cursor on your phone from thin air that you can use to reach the "unreachable" portions of your screen, especially if you are holding your phone with one hand. Besides being a "phone touchpad" it has a bunch of ways of triggering actions/shortcuts, for example: volume or brightness control, launching an app (I use it for launching a floating calculator, notes...), opening notification shade, copying text (it can copy any text that is under the cursor, even if it's not selectable)...

It's not that I couldn't go without it, but it changed the way I use my phone and it would feel really weird without it. It feels like it should be a part of the OS.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (4 children)

You can just connect a Bluetooth mouse if you have one and a cursor will appear natively.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think you are missing the point of the app. The cursor part of it is more of a gesture, or you can think of it as a "thumb extension". The point is to help you avoid the inconvenience and save time by allowing you to reach farther parts of your screen without repositioning your hand. I called it a "phone touchpad" just because, when you activate it, a part of the screen is acting like a touchpad. You are not using it for a specific purpose of having a cursor on your phone, the cursor is basically just the tip of your "virtual extended thumb". So it's a utility/accessibility software.
Using a physical mouse would be the opposite of what this app is trying to achieve.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Okay, I tried it, it's not for me. Would be WAY better if the track pad was logarithmic so the cursor was closer to your thumb as it got lower on the screen, eventually meeting your thumb when dragged low enough.

If it had that feature (and played well with the bluelight filter I use, twilight) I'd be sold on it.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I think it might be possible only in the paid version, but that's exactly how it works, you just have to increase the Cursor area in Swipe zones settings.

And it does stay under the Twilight if you give Twilight the accessibility permission.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I'm not sure what system you're on, but mine does do that. Not all the way down so they're touching but it goes from a little above my thumb when at the bottom, to my thumb being around the middle of the screen with the cursor at the top of my phone display.

Edit: I think if you dig around in the settings you can change the distance. But it's probably behind the paywall.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (12 replies)