microsoft / microsoft/PowerToys

X shaped crosshairs

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#48,122 2 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Needs-Triage Product-Mouse Pointer Crosshairs
Dominant language
C
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139k
Forks
8.6k
PR merge metrics
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Description

Description of the new feature / enhancement

The current crosshairs are Plus (+) shaped. A drawback is that the crosshair will obscure the text that you want to focus on. A simple alternative is to have an X shaped crosshair (basically the crosshair overlay is rotated 45 degrees). This would allow crosshairs to have the full location pointing benefit of crosshairs, while not overlapping with where a user's attention is.

Scenario when this would be used?

In conjunction with the center radius setting, this would let me have a much more highly visible crosshairs while getting them out of the way of the vertical and horizontal areas of focus (typical when dealing with multiple lines of text). It'd help a lot by not having to constantly readjust the cursor position just for readability.

Supporting information

No response

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

No files, tests, or entry points are identified in the issue. Start by locating the existing crosshair overlay and the center-radius setting in PowerToys, then trace how the current plus shape is rendered and configured. Done means users can select an X-shaped crosshair that preserves the existing positioning behavior without obscuring horizontal or vertical text areas.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
desktop
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
45/100

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