Cursor FX for Ghostty

Thirteen animated cursor effects for the Ghostty terminal, with two special moments: Enter, when you send a prompt in Claude Code (or run a command in zsh), the effect plays out from the cursor along the lines of the input box; and done, when Claude's answer arrives (or a long command finishes), it plays again from the edges inward, so you notice even when you've looked away. Switch effects with one command, tune them in a browser panel with a live preview.

Every cursor look stays one character wide, only touches the block itself (a letter under the cursor stays readable) and holds still with cursor-fx idle off. The prompt mark (the ❯ at the start of Claude Code's input line or your shell prompt) takes the same style. The input box's two lines can have a calm look of their own too (neon tubes, a lightning spark running across, a fireworks fuse, data dashes for cyber…), off by default, and take a little of the effect's color (LINE_TINT / LINE_COLOR, a plain tint, no glow). Every part of every effect has its own on/off switch: typing, Enter, done, delete-all, the cursor's look, the prompt mark, the box lines' color and their animated look (and blinking, off by default).

Moving forward along the row counts as typing: a letter, a Chinese character, or a whole phrase your input method commits at once (it plays like one keystroke, never the delete-all move; cyber and hologram decrypt or print the whole phrase). Each effect's "Chinese input" switch turns that off. The prompt mark keeps its style when your prompt wraps onto more rows and while Ghostty isn't the focused window (it holds still then). Deleting a whole line (select all + delete, Home) plays each effect's big move; cursor jumps to another row stay quiet, so programs redrawing the screen never set anything off.

Known limitations

• The input box is found by its look. A shader can't ask Claude Code where its input box is, so each effect looks for a thin line across the window (ink at 5, 45, 66, 88 and 95 % of the width, background 4 px above and below) up to a few rows above and below the cursor. Claude Code draws it in grey (rgb 136 or 138), or in your palette's white with its ANSI themes. If that line is within about 3 % of your background color, or a Claude Code update redraws the box (lines 8 px or thicker, a sidebar, no lines), Enter plays just under the sent line instead. A full-width horizontal rule from another program right above or below the cursor lights up like a box line. Checked in the test harness with Claude Code's line grey on dark grey, black, Dracula and Solarized Dark backgrounds.
• A prompt that wraps over several rows: aurora, cyber, embers, fireworks, hologram, mecha and teleport play their Enter effect along the bottom box line only (glitch, katana, lightning, neon, phosphor and shockwave find both lines).
• Forward jumps count as typing: End, or accepting a shell suggestion, plays the small typing effect, not the big move (so committed Chinese text never sets off the delete-all move).
• Other programs that set the cursor color themselves (OSC 12) with an odd blue or green value can set off an Enter or done effect; the signals use those lowest bits.
• tmux: the Enter and done signals rely on the cursor color reaching Ghostty; inside tmux that depends on your tmux setup and is untested.
• bash and fish: only the zsh hook ships; the README's snippets for other shells are untested.
• Battery: while any animated effect is on, Ghostty redraws the focused window continuously. cursor-fx idle off makes the screen calmer; cursor-fx off is the only real saver.

Requirements

• Ghostty 1.4 or newer on macOS or Linux (Ghostty has no Windows build).
• Python 3.8 or newer (for cursor-fx; no packages needed; the one that comes with macOS works).
• A dark theme: the effects add light, so on a light background they are faint. Colors sit in the 7–9.5:1 contrast range on a dark grey background.
• A block cursor (Ghostty's default). With a bar or underline cursor (for example vim's insert mode) the cursor, prompt-mark and box-line looks stay off; the moves and Enter effects still play.

Install

Clone this repository (or download it as a ZIP from the green Code button), then in its folder:

./install.sh

This copies shaders/ and cursor-effects/ into your Ghostty config directory and cursor-fx into ~/.local/bin, backing up anything it replaces. Then:

cursor-fx lightning    # pick an effect; Ghostty reloads at once
cursor-fx              # list them, the active one marked
cursor-fx off          # plain cursor

Copying a single shader by hand instead? On Linux, change #define Y_DOWN true near its top to false, or the effect plays upside down (install.sh does this for you).

The Enter and done effects

Shaders can't see keys, so two tiny hooks tell the effect what happened: cursor-fx signal on Enter and cursor-fx signal done when the answer arrives. Each nudges the cursor color by one invisible step for a moment (the last bit of the blue or green value); the shader reads that as the signal.

Claude Code — merge hooks/claude-code-hook.json into ~/.claude/settings.json: a UserPromptSubmit hook for Enter and a Stop hook (Claude finished answering) for done.

zsh — add hooks/zsh-hook.zsh to your ~/.zshrc: Enter before every command, done after any command that took more than 5 seconds. (bash/fish: call cursor-fx signal --tty "$(tty)" from your pre-command hook and cursor-fx signal done --tty "$(tty)" after long commands.)

Switch both off any time with cursor-fx enter off; cursor-fx jumps off silences the delete-all moves; cursor-fx idle off stops the small animations between keystrokes (crackle, breath, ping) for a calmer screen.

Battery

Be aware: while any animated shader is installed, Ghostty redraws the focused window on every screen refresh (that's how time-based effects