How to setup Terminal Cursor Animations (3 Methods)

Thanks for watching! What are your thoughts on cursor animations? I think they look really nice, but they can be distracting at times. Even so, I think cursor animations are a really awesome feature!

I didn't mention Neovide (https://neovide.dev/) because 1. it's not a terminal and 2. I forgot to. Neovide is great, but I prefer a terminal first, neovim second workflow, rather than the other way around. They are the reason these animations are gaining so much attention though, so credit where it's due!

Timestamps:
00:00 Start
01:08 Kitty Terminal
02:30 smear-cursor.nvim
05:08 Ghostty (Source)
07:24 Custom trail shader

Kitty Terminal:
https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/

smear-cursor.nvim (Neovim only)
https://github.com/sphamba/smear-cursor.nvim

I didn't go very in-depth with how to setup smear-cursor.nvim. I recommend using a package manager for nvim (I use https://github.com/folke/lazy.nvim) and then copy and pasting the setup code from the readme into a plugin file. Lazy.nvim has better documentation on their website.

Ghostty:
https://ghostty.org/

Ghostty shaders:
https://github.com/KroneCorylus/ghostty-shader-playground

My Patreon:
https://patreon.com/codingwithsphere

Music from:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGTFqaQh26w&t=437s

Coding with Sphere

Three methods for adding cursor animations to terminals: using Kitty terminal's built-in cursor trail feature with simple configuration, installing the smearcursor.nvim plugin for Neovim that works across any terminal, and building Ghostty terminal from source to use custom cursor trail shaders. Each approach has different compatibility requirements and visual effects.