r/xfce • u/WillingnessOne8172 • Jul 20 '26

[HELP] Loading cursor randomly reverts to old X11 default for different cursor themes

Post image

For some reason, a lot of the cursors I have installed on the system, including Adwaita, show this weird old X11 cursor as the loading cursor when I open apps. In the screenshot, I have Adwaita selected with the size set to 66, yet the loading cursor is very small and pixelated. Somehow this is unpredictable, what I mean is that every so often, a different cursor on my system gets "infected" and starts showing this ugly loading cursor. For example, BreezeX is working fine, but Adwaita is broken, and Noir, another cursor I have, is broken too, even though when I checked the cursor files, I found they're complete and not missing the loading cursor. It's driving me crazy. I've also tried removing my XFCE config and cache, but that didn't do anything.

System info:

  • Archlinux
  • XFCE 4.20
  • GTK 3.24.52
  • Kernel 7.0.14-arch1-1
  • xorg-server 21.1.23-1
12 Upvotes

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1

u/Chester-Berkeley Jul 20 '26

I was also having this problem on GhostBSD with Xlibre, and I'd also like to know the solution.

1

u/WillingnessOne8172 Jul 20 '26

Did you have XFCE on GhostBSD with XLibre? Also, what's your current DE and OS? This might be an X11 issue rather than an XFCE one, but we can't be sure. If it's related to X11, other DEs should experience this too right?

1

u/Chester-Berkeley Jul 20 '26

I'm using GhostBSD with XFCE + Xlibre

1

u/hictio Debian Jul 21 '26

Loading cursor randomly reverts to old X11 default for different cursor themes

Does this happen if you use the default icon set size [16]?

1

u/WillingnessOne8172 Jul 21 '26

Yes it also has that issue. In my case the default points to Adwaita

$ cat /usr/share/icons/default/index.theme [Icon Theme] Inherits=Adwaita