Cursor‑following auto‑zoom on Linux Wayland: reading the cursor from the GPU in Rust

Description and use

HyperGSR reads the GPU’s hardware cursor plane to obtain cursor coordinates without root, enabling auto‑zoom camera movement on Wayland and X11.

Problem

Wayland does not expose a global cursor position, making auto‑zoom screen recorders difficult to implement.

Outcome

HyperGSR achieves about 56 MB RAM usage at 1080p60 while providing smooth cursor‑following auto‑zoom on native Wayland and X11 without root.

Workflow

• Open /dev/dri/card* with libdrm
• Enable universal planes and atomic properties
• Find the cursor plane (e.g., plane #92)
• Read CRTC_X, CRTC_Y, and FB_ID properties
• Use these coordinates to drive a spring‑physics camera
• Record via PipeWire and encode with NVENC or VAAPI

Evidence

Wayland won’t tell an app where the cursor is.

Source

HyperGSR reads the cursor straight from the GPU's hardware cursor plane, without root, and moves a critically damped spring camera to wherever you are working, the way Screen Studio does on macOS.

Source

It runs on native Wayland (COSMIC, GNOME, KDE Plasma, Hyprland, Sway) and on X11.

Source