Endless Parentheses

Ramblings on productivity and technical subjects.

profile for Malabarba on Stack Exchange

Beacon — Never lose your cursor again

What started out as a cute idea I was playing around with, eventually turned to be one of my favorite packages. Beacon won’t help you type faster, code better, or cure cancer like some of the other packages. Its effect is mostly cosmetic, but with practical benefits. Put simply, if you turn on this minor mode, whenever the window scrolls up or down a light will blink on your cursor. That’s it.

At first, I thought this would be purely cosmetic. But my super scientific experience has been that there’s actually a practical benefit to it. The amount of brain energy you save and the level of eye strain you avoid by having this simple “eye-guide” is noticeable, specially during those late-night writing marathons.

Just install from Gelpa with the usual M-x list-packages and turn it on.

(beacon-mode 1)
(setq beacon-push-mark 35)
(setq beacon-color "#666600")

It has a lot of configuration options for you to specify situations where it shouldn’t blink, as well as different details like duration, delay, size, and color. Either have a look at the Readme or just issue M-x customize-group to see them all.

comments powered by Disqus