Springy Cursor

Neovide / Zed style animated cursor trail for VS Code.

_{Captured in One Dark Pro with the default settings; the trail inherits the theme cursor colour. The recording uses "springyCursor.preset": "custom" with animationLength: 0.45 (everything else identical to neovide) so the smear is visible frame by frame — the shipped presets run 3–4x faster.}

Based on Neovide-Cursor by LengineerC (MIT), with the runtime rewritten: idle CPU is zero, the trail follows devicePixelRatio, it never paints outside the editor, and the settings live in VS Code instead of a JS file inside the extension folder.

Features

• Four-corner damped springs. Each corner of the cursor block is driven by a critically damped spring, so the block stretches and compresses depending on the direction of travel.
• Zero idle cost. A MutationObserver wakes requestAnimationFrame only when something moves; once every spring settles the loop stops completely.
• HiDPI crisp. The canvas follows devicePixelRatio and reacts to monitor changes.
• Clipped to the editor. Drawing is clipped to the owning editor's .overflow-guard, so the trail never bleeds into the sidebar, tab bar or split borders.
• Scroll aware. Virtual scrolling is measured against .lines-content and matched instead of animated.
• Multi-cursor and split views are picked up immediately.
• Presets: neovide (classic elastic), subtle (short and restrained), zed (smooth, no hard leading snap) and custom.

Install

1. Install from the Marketplace — no companion extension required.
2. On the first start it patches workbench.html itself and asks for one Reload Window.

Prefer to drive it manually? Set springyCursor.autoEnable to false and use the Springy Cursor: Enable / Update Cursor Trail and Disable Cursor Trail commands.

How it works, and what it touches

VS Code gives extensions no access to the workbench DOM, so the runtime has to be injected into workbench.html in the installation directory. This extension does that itself:

• The injected code sits in a marked block (SPRINGY-CURSOR-START / END) with the script inlined, and the original file is kept as workbench.html.springy-pristine.
• After every patch the matching sha256 entry for workbench.html is rewritten in product.json, so VS Code does not complain that "your Code installation appears to be corrupt".
• A VS Code update replaces the install directory and resets workbench.html; the extension notices on startup and re-applies the patch, so you only reload the window once.
• It works in Restricted Mode (untrusted windows) — it only touches the local editor UI, never workspace contents.
• Disable Cursor Trail restores the original file byte for byte (CSP included); uninstalling the extension does the same cleanup automatically.

Settings

Search for springyCursor in Settings, then reload the window when prompted.

Setting	Type	Default	Description
springyCursor.autoEnable	boolean	true	Patch automatically on first start and after a VS Code update
springyCursor.color	string	""	Trail color. Empty (the default) follows --vscode-editorCursor-foreground, re-read every frame so theme changes apply live. Set e.g. #FFC0CB if you want the pink from the icon
springyCursor.opacity	number	1	Trail opacity (0–1)
springyCursor.glow	boolean	true	Draw a glow around the trail
springyCursor.glowBlur	number	0.5	Glow blur radius as a multiple of the cursor size
springyCursor.preset	string	"neovide"	neovide, subtle, zed or custom
springyCursor.animationLength	number	0.125	Jump animation length in seconds (custom preset)
springyCursor.shortAnimationLength	number	0.05	Same-line moves such as typing (custom preset)
springyCursor.animateOnTyping	boolean	true	Animate short single-line moves
springyCursor.animateOnSelection	boolean	true	Animate while selecting text
springyCursor.rankTrailFactors	number[]	[1, 0.9, 0.5, 0.3]	Per-corner duration multipliers, most trailing first
springyCursor.hardSnap	boolean	true	Snap leading corners quickly for the elastic stretch
springyCursor.leadingSnapFactor	number	0.1	Animation-length multiplier for leading corners
springyCursor.leadingSnapThreshold	number	0.5	Direction alignment above which a corner counts as leading

Limitations

• Changing a setting needs one window reload, because the script is inlined into workbench.html.
• The VS Code installation directory has to be writable. Installs under C:\Program Files need elevation; if the checksum cannot be rewritten the "installation appears to be corrupt" notice stays and can be silenced with Don't Show Again.

中文说明

Neovide / Zed 风格的光标拖尾扩展，用四角阻尼弹簧驱动光标块，附带拖尾与发光。空闲时完全停止 requestAnimationFrame，跟随 HiDPI，绘制裁剪在编辑器内，支持多光标与分屏。

安装：从 Marketplace 安装（不需要额外插件）→ 首次启动自动完成注入 → 按提示点一次 Reload Window。

注意：改设置需要重载一次窗口；VS Code 升级后扩展会自动补回注入，无需手动操作；Disable Cursor Trail 会把 workbench.html 按原始字节还原，卸载扩展时也会自动清理。

License

MIT. Original work by LengineerC, fork maintained at 30d98f9b2/Neovide-Cursor.