Cursor invisible, wrong size, or a black box on Omarchy

Three different problems share the same symptom bucket here: the pointer is gone, the pointer is drawn as a black square or a smear, or the pointer is the wrong size. The first two are the same class of bug on different GPU drivers. The third is a config plumbing problem specific to Omarchy 4.

The fix

Pointer invisible, a black box, or glitchy (Omarchy 4.0.x)

1. Open ~/.config/hypr/looknfeel.lua and append:

-- The GPU's hardware cursor plane does not display the pointer here.
hl.config({
  cursor = {
    no_hardware_cursors = true,
  },
})

2. Run hyprctl reload.

That is the exact block Omarchy itself appends on nouveau machines in install/user/hardware/fix-nouveau-cursor.sh, shipped since 4.0.0. It is also the block BigNatoDemon verified on a VMware guest in issue #7918.

Do not put a cursor { ... } section in hyprland.conf on 4.x. A legacy .conf block is ignored once a hyprland.lua config exists.

Do not reach for hyprctl keyword cursor:no_hardware_cursors true either. On 4.x it prints keyword can't work with non-legacy parsers. Use eval. and changes nothing, still exiting 0. Issue #8797 records that message, and also a session on an AMD iGPU that died with SIGABRT the moment omarchy-capture-screenshot ran its hyprctl eval of this same setting. The triage on that issue traced the faulting frame to a stale keybind handle in Hyprland 0.56.2 rather than to the cursor option, but the crash was real, and editing the file and reloading avoids the question.

Pointer invisible, a black box, or glitchy (3.8.4 and earlier)

Append to ~/.config/hypr/looknfeel.conf:

cursor {
  no_hardware_cursors = true
}

Then hyprctl reload. This is the pre-Quattro form of the same setting. theswampdawg put it in input.conf and it fixed #4847 on an AMD RX 6700 XT dual-monitor desktop; commenters who hit the same black box right after updating to 3.4.1 fixed it the same way. Any personal .conf file that hyprland.conf sources will do.

Pointer is the wrong size (Omarchy 4.0.x)

The default is 24. Do not create ~/.config/hypr/envs.lua: nothing requires that module, so anything you set there is silently dropped. Issue #9902 documents this, and the triage comment on that issue reproduced it on a clean 4.0 worker: variables set in a personal envs.lua never reached a spawned client, while the XCURSOR_SIZE=24 from default/hypr/envs.lua did.

1. Open ~/.config/hypr/hyprland.lua and add this at the very bottom, under the “Add any other personal Hyprland configuration below” comment:

hl.env("XCURSOR_SIZE", "32")
hl.env("HYPRCURSOR_SIZE", "32")

2. Set the GTK side too, because Omarchy never touches it:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-size 32

3. Log out and back in. Environment variables reach applications when they launch, so hyprctl reload is not enough.

The tail of hyprland.lua is evaluated after require("default.hypr.omarchy"), so your value wins over the 24 in default/hypr/envs.lua. The triage on #9902 checked exactly this: an XCURSOR_SIZE of 99 set after the defaults replaced the 24 in a spawned client.

Pointer is the wrong size (3.8.4 and earlier)

~/.config/hypr/envs.conf is not sourced by the shipped hyprland.conf on 3.8.4 either. Put env = XCURSOR_SIZE,32 at the bottom of ~/.config/hypr/hyprland.conf and log out.

Wrong cursor theme

Omarchy installs no cursor theme package of its own and never sets org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-theme. Discussion #8428 asks how to make Bibata the default and has no answer beyond another user asking the same thing. Install a theme, then apply it in both places:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-theme "Bibata-Modern-Classic"
hyprctl setcursor Bibata-Modern-Classic 24

To make the Hyprland half survive a relogin, XCURSOR_THEME is the standard variable clients read, so hl.env("XCURSOR_THEME", "Bibata-Modern-Classic") alongside the size lines at the bottom of hyprland.lua uses the same channel as the size override. Nobody on the tracker has confirmed that exact line, so check a fresh client’s environment afterwards as described below. Check your theme actually provides a cursor named default: on discussion #10947 a reporter saw imv 5.0.1 crash with a theme that does not.

Verify it worked

hyprctl getoption cursor:no_hardware_cursors
hyprctl configerrors

The first should report the value you set, the second should be empty. For the size, read the environment of a freshly launched application rather than trusting the config:

tr '\0' '\n' < /proc/$(pgrep -n ghostty)/environ | grep -i cursor

If the hardware cursor plane was the problem, the error spam stops. Check the session log at /run/user/$UID/hypr/$HYPRLAND_INSTANCE_SIGNATURE/hyprland.log for drmCloseBufferHandle in cursor failed, which BigNatoDemon counted over 1700 times in a few hours before applying the fix.

Why it happens

Hyprland normally hands the pointer to a dedicated DRM cursor plane on the GPU. Several drivers accept the buffer and then fail the commit, so the plane shows nothing, a stale black buffer, or a partial smear. Confirmed on nouveau (Omarchy automates the fix there), on VMware’s vmwgfx, and on AMD dual-monitor desktops in #4847 and #4934. Software cursors cost almost nothing on a desktop and simply sidestep the plane. The AMD case was expected to get a Hyprland-side fix at the time, and #4847 was closed in a bulk review in July 2026 rather than by a change in Omarchy, so a current Hyprland may not need the setting on that hardware.

The size problem is unrelated. Omarchy 4 moved Hyprland config to Lua, and the personal override files that hyprland.lua requires are monitors, input, bindings, looknfeel and autostart. There is no envs in that list and Omarchy has never shipped a config/hypr/envs.lua, so a file you create there is dead code. The session environment channel the manual points at, ~/.config/uwsm/env.d/*, is exported before Hyprland starts, so it cannot override anything Omarchy sets with hl.env afterwards.

If your pointer fix vanished during the 3 to 4 upgrade, that is expected: hypr/looknfeel.lua is on the upgrade’s always-copy list, and your old looknfeel.conf is deliberately left on disk unread so you can port it by hand.

If that did not work

• The pointer comes back and then breaks again in the same session. That is #11943, still open on 4.0.3 with no_hardware_cursors already set, on a hybrid Intel plus NVIDIA laptop driving four outputs. hyprctl setcursor Adwaita 24 re-renders it each time, but only until the next recurrence.
• The pointer is visible but laggy across monitors rather than missing. Give each output an explicit rule instead of a generic one, as al3rez did in #2132. Ignore the WLR_NO_HARDWARE_CURSORS line in that issue: that variable is ignored by current Hyprland, and the rest of that config is 3.x .conf syntax you would have to port.
• The pointer disappears only while you are dragging a screenshot selection. That is #8240, open: omarchy-capture-screenshot forces hardware cursors back on before opening the picker so the software pointer is not baked into the capture, which hides it on exactly the hardware that needs software cursors.
• Night light does not tint the pointer. Cosmetic and open as #4973.
• If you lose the pointer on a big screen rather than seeing it broken, discussion #5833 is where people compare the hypr-dynamic-cursors plugin. Third party plugins are not covered by Omarchy support.

Related

• Hybrid GPU laptop black screen
• NVIDIA drivers on Omarchy 4
• Fractional scaling looks blurry or huge
• Screenshot shortcut not working
• Hardware notes: hybrid GPU and multi-monitor
• Omarchy manual: Keyboard, mouse and trackpad