Giant, inaccurate mouse cursor on Wayland when using high DPI

[jeremy-wolfe]

Issue Type: Bug

This issue has happened occasionally in the past, but I could just close and reopen Code and it would go away. Now it is happening 99% of the time. I have seen other people mention the same issue in the comments on other issues, but I could not find an issue that was specifically created for it.

The mouse cursor appears to be double its normal size, and the point where a click operation actually occurs is inconsistent and often far off from where one would expect it to be in relation to the cursor. For example, when you click with the cursor between two characters, the caret might jump to the line above and 2 characters to the left of where you clicked - or maybe it's on the right line and just 1 character off; it's very inconsistent.

Every once in a while, there are certain areas where the cursor will return to its normal size while I am hovering over them. I've noticed this happen occasionally while hovering over the explorer pane or the open tabs bar, but it is rare that it happens at all.

I also noticed that sometimes when I open a second window, the cursor goes to the correct size in both windows, but when I close the second window it reverts to double-size in the original window. Very strange.

This occurs on Arch Linux. I am using Gnome, but I had the exact same issue in a Plasma environment as well. I have tried the latest versions of the open source build, the Microsoft branded release, and Insiders. The problem exists on all of them. It also does not make any difference which cursor theme I am using.

I have multiple monitors and only one of them is high DPI. If I drag the window to a normal DPI monitor, the cursor appears normal. The issue occurs on the high DPI monitor regardless of the amount of scaling (except at 100% of course) - I have tested at 125%, 150%, and 200% and had the same problem on all, so it doesn't appear to be related to fractional scaling. It is also worth noting that the scaling of the cursor doesn't seem to match the display scaling - it looks like it's always double size.

As a workaround, I can fiddle with the --force-device-scale-factor argument and the zoom setting, and get a combination that works OK. But that only takes care of the cursor size, not the accuracy issue, and in that 1% of the time that the cursor renders correctly, it becomes tiny when using the workaround.

These issues do not occur if I don't start Code with the ozone options, but then of course it uses raster scaling resulting in blurry text.

VS Code version: Code - Insiders 1.62.0-insider (b3318bc, 2021-11-03T13:18:48.802Z)
OS version: Linux x64 5.14.15-arch1-1
Restricted Mode: No

System Info

Item	Value
CPUs	AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Eight-Core Processor (16 x 3200)
GPU Status	2d_canvas: enabled gpu_compositing: enabled multiple_raster_threads: enabled_on oop_rasterization: disabled_off opengl: enabled_on rasterization: disabled_software skia_renderer: enabled_on video_decode: disabled_software vulkan: disabled_off webgl: enabled webgl2: enabled
Load (avg)	0, 0, 1
Memory (System)	31.28GB (15.66GB free)
Process Argv	--enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland --crash-reporter-id 60cb16e3-b07c-417c-9de0-aab704011725
Screen Reader	no
VM	0%
DESKTOP_SESSION	gnome
XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP	GNOME
XDG_SESSION_DESKTOP	gnome
XDG_SESSION_TYPE	wayland

[smasher164]

I noticed that today, the Chromium bug tracker marked the umbrella issue for wayland cursor bugs as fixed: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=928274.

[xsrvmy]

I have an interesting observation actually:
I am using sway, and there is some glitch with my cursor that makes it sometimes use my cursor theme set in KDE (breeze), and sometimes the default black cursor. In chrome, the cursor is regular sized and changes to breeze. In vscode, the cursor stays black and is very big.

[markbaas]

It's probably related to electron/electron#11050

Also it happens on X11. Vscode needs to upgrade to electron 17 and it's fixed.

[edrex]

In my testing cursor scaling on HiDPI outputs under native wayland appears to work correctly with the latest electron 18 based insider build (see #148507 (comment)), so I believe this is fixed.

[FossPrime]

This exact issue also happens on 14" 1080p Chromebooks out of the box. They come set to 125% display scaling. They are running Chrome 105.

When running apps like Firefox and Microsoft Edge, they run under Wayland, so the issue would manifest there too.

The issue also affects GitHub's GitHub.dev and Code Spaces🌍

Scaling down to 100% works, bit is very tiny. 200% is not a reasonable option.

[deepak1556]

Is this present with latest stable 1.73 when launching with --enable-features=WaylandWindowDecorations --ozone-platform=wayland ?

[KucharczykL]

Seems to be fixed on my end.

[ozls]

Not fixed on my end, on Wayland and using Code 1.74.2 with Electron 19.1, also with scaling set to 125%

[deepak1556]

@ozls are you launching vscode with the flags mentioned in #136390 (comment) ?

[ozls]

Yes. Additional info : seems to only happen when I run two vscode windows on two different monitors, an unscaled one and a scaled one (namely my 1080 laptop screen scaled 100% and my 4k external monitor scaled 125%)

[NVolcz]

The options mentioned in #136390 (comment) fixes this issue for me but vscode is now blurry on my laptop screen (3456x2160 + 200% scaled) but looks good on my external monitor (3440x1440, 100% scaled).

Edit: Using fractional scaling doesn't seem to help.

[iskrisis]

This still happens on wayland with multi-monitors with different resolutions and fractional scaling. I have two screens 1920x1080 and 3840x2160 and no matter on which screen the cursor is in VSCode its giant.

[olafurw]

Fedora 38. Just added a 3rd monitor and if the main monitor uses 200% scaling then it doesn't matter what other monitor VSCode is on (or what their scaling setting is), the mouse cursor is huge.

If I set all monitors to 100% scaling then the cursor behaves correctly.

[la3rence]

Ubuntu 22. 200% scaling with retina display running in a VM on macOS. Resolution 3360x2100.
This issue seems happen in many apps like the built-in Terminal, Firefox and VS Code.

[wangwillian0]

For those using KDE, going to the SDDM settings and clicking "Apply Plasma Settings" solved this issue for me.

[Firestar-Reimu]

same problem, but my cursor is very tiny when the cursor is in vscode

KDE Plasma 6.0 with wayland and vscode 1.87.2

2560x1440 screen, 200% scaling.

default is /usr/bin/code --unity-launch, --enable-features=WaylandWindowDecorations --ozone-platform=wayland can solve this problem, or delete the --unity-launch option.