[SOLVED] Press a button in order to move a mouse to the second monitor

ravicious · 2012-09-30 16:40:49

Until I moved in to a different city, my physical monitor setup looked like this (I use the bigger monitor as my main screen, a panel is there):

But now it looks like that:

So I set up the "digital" setup to match the physical one, but it was a PITA: the panel is on the right side of the screen and every time I wanted to access it, I swiped my mouse to the other screen. I restored the logical setup like it was before, now it's much more comfortable to reach the right panel, but moving a mouse to the other screen is very unintuitive.

Is there any config or an application which will require from me pressing down a button if I want to move my cursor to the other screen?

Last edited by ravicious (2012-10-01 07:51:27)

Trilby · 2012-09-30 16:52:35

I don't know of a way to lock the mouse to one monitor until you press a button (aside from modifying the WM), but there are several apps that could bind a keypress to "warping" the mouse cursor to a specified location.

So if the latter behavior is what you are looking for, xdotool is a great app that will do this well while offering many other options too. If you want really light to "do one thing and do it well" then you can get swarp from suckless which warps the pointer to a location - nothing more.

edit: in hindsight, I suspect there is a hackish way to effectively lock the cursor to a single monitor until you press the appropriate key binding: set up your monitor geometries something like the following:

+---------------------------+
|                           |
|                           |
|                           |
|                           |
+---------------------------+
                             +-----------------+
                             |                 |
                             |                 |
                             |                 |
                             +------------------+

This way there would be no shared screen edge over which the mouse could move. I have not, however, tried this type of geometry, so no promises.

Last edited by Trilby (2012-09-30 16:57:10)

ravicious · 2012-09-30 19:35:24

Your "hackish" solution works surprisingly well! I think I'll use it, I don't really any key bindings when I have something like this now. Big thanks!

Edit:

Actually it works when I do it in nvidia-settings (I know it's bad) and apply it, but after a reboot the smaller screen moves up (so it isn't +1920+1080, but +1920+0).

A fragment from my xorg.conf:

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "Stereo" "0"
    Option         "nvidiaXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-1"
    Option         "metamodes" "DFP-0: 1366x768_60 +1920+1080, DFP-1: 1920x1080_60 +0+0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

It think it's better to create a new thread now.

Last edited by ravicious (2012-10-01 07:51:02)

Arch Linux

#1 2012-09-30 16:40:49

[SOLVED] Press a button in order to move a mouse to the second monitor

#2 2012-09-30 16:52:35

Re: [SOLVED] Press a button in order to move a mouse to the second monitor

#3 2012-09-30 19:35:24

Re: [SOLVED] Press a button in order to move a mouse to the second monitor

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